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In an unusual alliance, Jewish media and striking journalists are uniting to cover the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — How many times should an alleged synagogue shooter’s name be mentioned in a news story about his trial, now beginning after more than four years?
For the Pittsburgh Union Press last month, the answer was seven. For the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, it was an uneasy five, in a departure from its usual answer of zero — a number chosen out of deference to a community devastated by the shooting.
The slight difference was the only discrepancy between one set of stories published by the two news organizations covering the trial of Robert Bowers, accused of murdering 11 Jews in their synagogue here in 2018.
The anomaly offers a window into an unusual partnership between the two publications — the city’s Jewish paper and the news site established by striking staffers for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — born in February when it became clear that the trial would last months.
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle editor Toby Tabachnick was dreading the trial coverage, with a staff of just three on the editorial side: herself and two reporters, David Rullo and Adam Reinherz.
“I started getting really nervous. Like, how are we going to do this?” Tabachnick said on the eve of the trial, speaking at the federal courthouse where jury selection would soon begin. “Our regular reporters could have been here. But it would have been extremely taxing, difficult and emotional for us, because we’re so ingrained in the community too.”
Plus, she added, “In addition to this trial, which is going to be every day for three months, we’re covering the synagogues, events and the holidays, the lectures, we still have a regular community newspaper to put out.”
Tabachnick knew Andrew “Goldy” Goldstein, one of the Post-Gazette’s team that picked up a Pulitzer for their coverage of the massacre, from his time as a Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle intern. She also knew he was on strike and wondered whether he could use the extra freelance opportunity.
Instead, Goldstein immediately offered up a better idea: Join with the Pittsburgh Union Progress, the strike paper, in a joint reporting project, organized in part through the Pittsburgh Media Partnership, an incubator for local journalism. (The Jewish Telegraphic Agency is raising funds for the coverage.)
Working together just made sense, Goldstein said. The Chronicle was deeply resourced and credible in the Jewish community, and the Progress had on board Torsten Ove, a local legend.
From left to right, Bob Batz of the Pittsburgh Union Progress, Toby Tabachnick of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and Andrew Goldstein of the Progress pose in the Joseph Weis Jr. Courthouse in Pittsburgh, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
“We have the all-star federal courts reporter in Torsten and we have a lot of really great journalists who love Pittsburgh, love this community, and we’ll do our best to cover it,” Goldstein said, noting that the Chronicle would also have access to the Progress’s photographers. “But the Chronicle brings something different entirely to the table, which is, they’re so deeply sourced in the Pittsburgh Jewish community, and they have such an interest in this trial in particular.”
Newsroom collaborations have become more frequent in recent years as publications realize they can expand their impact and audience by working together. But while there are a growing number of relationships between local and national publications and between daily and investigative outlets, ties between mainstream newsrooms and community or ethnic media are less common.
S. Mitra Kalita, the founder and director of URL Media, a network of Black and Brown community news outlets that share content and revenue, said the value in such partnerships was not just in delivering relief as media staffs shrink, but also in sensitizing mainstream media to minority sensibilities.
“Talking about who [the ethnic media outlet is] serving and why we’re doing it this way — the spirit of real collaboration is a bit of that give and take,” she said. “We make mainstream media way better because it starts to infuse mainstream media with aspects of community and thus redefine the mainstream.”
The residual trauma of the massacre in the Pittsburgh collaboration made it all the more important for the mainstream reporters to be sensitive to the nuances that the Jewish media was bringing, she said.
“Especially a story like this one, which was such an attack on a community — a community that was singled out for their sheer existence, the strategy cannot be ‘let’s just work in parallel,” Kalita said. “It’s not going to work. It has to be kind of a cross-pollination and a real collaboration.”
That’s exactly what is happening, according to the reporters and editors involved in the project, with communication easy between each publication’s editor and expertise flowing in both directions.
Ove a denizen of the Joseph F. Weis Jr. Courthouse for so long that he can tell stories about a sizable stretch of the portraits of judges that line its corridor walls; he may be the only court reporter to seek an interview with a judge after his death, to ask him why he was haunting the place. (The judge never showed, but his widow was less than surprised to hear that he was still working.)
He led a passel of Chronicle and Progress staffers through the warren-like courthouse on the Friday before the trial, handily impressing them with his intimacy with the building — he knew the provenance of the paintings in each courtroom — and its staff. Soo Song, the assistant U.S. attorney who is leading the prosecution team, smiled and nodded as she passed.
Torsten Ove, left, of the Pittsburgh Union Progress and Adam Reinherz of the PIttsburgh Jewish Chronicle confer on the first day of jury selection for the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre trial, April 24, 2023. (Toby Tabachnick)
Ove showed the reporters how to access court records for free, and while they stood around him at one of the computer terminals, the teams’ different emphases emerged: Ove predicted that jury selection, which started last week and is expected to last as long as three weeks, would not be a news generator, because in his experience, it rarely has been.
Reinherz and Tabachnick, attuned to reporting on faith communities, were not so sure: Reinherz wondered whether believing Catholics, who reject the death penalty, would be eliminated, and Tabachnick wondered whether defense attorneys would seek to keep Jews off the jury — and how they would go about doing that.
Reinherz ended up covering the first day of jury selection. “Local and national reporters decided the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle should have one seat during the initial session of day one,” Reinherz explained in a story that appeared on both news sites. He noted that the first member of the public to enter the courtroom was Daniel Leger, one of two survivors of the attack.
Working together across platforms was odd, said Bob Batz Jr., the Progress’s interim editor, but he could get used to it.
“This is uncharted territory for someone like me, and I’ve been doing this for a long time, and we don’t, you know, we don’t collaborate,” he said.
“We compete!” Tabachnick interjected.
“What we’re doing is not common, and it’s not going to be easy,” Batz said. “Surely, we’re going to tick each other off about something or somebody is going to put the wrong word in or there’s a million things that can go wrong, but the breaking of ground where you’re actually working together, it just makes sense in so many ways on this story. We’re really trying to serve the community.”
Tabachnick said she saw added value in keeping journalists she admired in the limelight while they are on strike. Journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette went on strike back in October over wages and working conditions, in a crescendo of mounting tensions between the paper’s longtime owners and the staff that contributed to a newsroom exodus even in 2018, when the paper won a Pulitzer for its synagogue shooting coverage. The strike is now one of the longest in journalism history, and the staffers contributing to the Pittsburgh Union Progress are doing so despite earning well below than their regular salaries.
“I feel good about getting their names, their publication’s name out,” Tabachnick said.
Each story is running in essentially identical form on both publications’ websites, with a line crediting their collaboration. Tabachnick and Batz had a brief and friendly email exchange before each clicked “publish” on their story about debate among victims’ families about the appropriateness of the death penalty.
The Chronicle is minimizing appearances of the name of the accused killer, out of sensitivity to readers who may want to see their community members centered rather than their aggressor. Some researchers and law enforcement officials have also called on journalists not to print mass shooters’ names and photographs, citing evidence that doing so may contribute to their glorification and even copycat crimes.
Batz says he totally gets the Chronicle’s thinking, despite making a different choice in his newsroom.
“We’re still feeling our way, we’re still figuring this out,” Batz said. “They don’t name the defendant in their story, and they haven’t. And our guy Torsten who’s an all-star courts reporter, he’s going to use the guy’s name. And then in real time going back and forth on email and text we came up with his solution and that story was on both websites in minutes and it was really kind of cool.”
Tabachnick picked up the account of the previous night’s collaboration as if she’d been working across a desk from Batz for decades instead of online since February.
“The solution was that I realized that with the trial starting, it really didn’t make sense not to use his name at all anymore that we really needed to as a news organization,” she said. “But that didn’t mean we had to overuse his name. And I’m not saying Torsten overused his name. He used it as much as he needed to use it in terms of style, but I took out a few of them and replaced it with ‘the defendant’ and we were all happy.”
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The post In an unusual alliance, Jewish media and striking journalists are uniting to cover the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Students for Justice in Palestine Surrenders Occidental College Encampment as Trustees Review Divestment Proposal
Member of Occidental College’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine addressing social media while occupying a section of the campus in April 2026. Photo: Screenshot.
Occidental College in Los Angeles informed the public earlier this week that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) took down an encampment it established during the final weeks of the semester to protest the school’s financial ties to Israel, a grievance manufactured by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement to promote its goal of eliminating the Jewish state.
By all accounts, the short-lived demonstration generated none of the widespread interest and enthusiasm that infused anti-Israel encampments of the 2023-2024 academic year, when many activists on campus vowed not to abandon their tents unless administrators acceded to the demands of the “global intifada.”
In contrast, SJP’s chapter at Occidental left the section of campus it occupied without permission “peacefully,” the college told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.
“Students involved in the encampment cited a recently submitted divestment proposal as their key issue,” it continued in a statement to The Algemeiner. “That proposal is currently under review by the College’s Board of Trustees through the college’s established process, which is designed to gather input from across our community.”
Further evidence of this encampment’s wilted spirit is the college’s confirming that it has successfully identified and initiated disciplinary proceedings against several protesters who engaged in “some actions” which violated the code of conduct as well as policies regulating peaceful assembly.
“These policies exist to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our entire community and to minimize disruption to campus operation,” the college said. “Occidental is committed to upholding these standards. We have been enforcing our policies in a way that prioritizes deescalation and our community’s safety.”
On Tuesday, SJP said it “will be back” in a post which proclaimed, “Long live the liberated zone!! Long live the intifada!! Long live the resistance!!” The statement hints at the possibility of a second encampment should Occidental College ultimately reject the divestment proposal that the school’s communications official said is already being review by the board of trustees.
Historically, Occidental College has opposed SJP’s call for adopting the BDS movement, arguing that doing so “would potentially chill the expression of diverse opinions” and be “divisive and damaging to the college community.” It has also welcomed working with Jewish advocacy groups to improve relations between DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) officials and Jewish students, the latter of whom continue to report that DEI officials across the country block antisemitism investigations or refuse to punish those found guilty of discriminatory conduct.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a federal civil rights complaint against Occidental which alleged that it had failed to correct a “pervasive and hostile environment” in which Jewish students were subject to “severe antisemitic bullying, intimidation, and physical threats.” To settle the case, the college agreed in November 2024 to “sweeping reforms” which included adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a reference guide for investigations of anti-Jewish hatred and adding a section on antisemitism to training courses on compliance with federal civil rights laws.
“As I believe this resolution demonstrates, antisemitism is antithetical to the college’s values,” Occidental president Tom Stritikus said after the resolution was announced. “Discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students should be unequivocally rejected in our community. As we continue campus discussions around inclusivity, Jewish and Israel identities should be recognized alongside other groups that have historically faced discrimination due to their religious, ancestral, or national identities.”
Occidental College is not the only higher education institution that SJP targeted for the establishment of an encampment this month.
On April 18, SJP at Smith College in Massachusetts occupied the Chapin Lawn section of campus and renamed it “The People’s University.” Armed with a litany of demands calling for “restructuring” Smith’s governance of its endowment, transferring power over the institution from administrators to faculty and students, and a “required course on race” informed by the divisive critical race theory discipline, the students initially vowed to dwell in the encampment indefinitely.
However, the mounting presence of public safety officers around the encampment site and little indication that the demonstration held the drawing power of encampments of previous academic years prompted SJP to consider settling for less than it wanted.
Additionally, the college had notified the group of being in violation of campus policies on peaceful assembly and threatened SJP with disciplinary sanctions, which the group described as “fear tactics.” Tamra Bates, director of student engagement, personally told the students they would be punished as “individuals” and, the group added, public safety officers addressed “at least one student” by their “full name.” After three days, paranoia took hold of the organizers, and they issued a prohibition on photography “at any time … especially of people’s faces.”
SJP ultimately agreed to enter negotiations with the college over email, a process which concluded with Smith College agreeing to hold a meeting with the group and college trustees “before the end of the semester.”
The students decamped the following Saturday.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US Lawmakers Warn of Aid Cuts if Nigeria Fails to Counter Islamist Attacks Against Christians
A Nigerian police truck stands at the deserted Maiduguri Monday Market the morning after multiple explosions struck the northeastern city of Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, March 17, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Kingimi
The US House Appropriations Committee has advanced a State Department funding bill which will restrict aid to Nigeria if the current government cannot stop what one lawmaker labeled a genocide against Christians.
“The Tinubu administration is spending millions lobbying Congress while failing to adequately address the genocide Nigerian Christians face daily,” Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) posted on X on Wednesday. He said the appropriations panel, on which he serves, “just passed our annual State Department funding bill which takes serious steps to address this crisis.”
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who assumed office in May 2023, is a member of the All Progressives Caucus (APC), one of Nigeria’s two dominant political parties, the other being the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The US legislation sets three conditions for Nigeria to receive full funding of aid: “taking effective steps to prevent and respond to violence and hold perpetrators accountable; prioritizing resources to support victims of such violence, including internally displaced persons”; and “actively facilitating the safe return, resettlement, and reconstruction of communities impacted by the violence.”
The bill limits US support for Nigeria to 50 percent unless the American secretary of state can certify the government adheres to all three conditions.
Moore posted on X that the bill requires Nigeria to focus on preventing atrocities, advancing religious freedom, prosecuting Fulani ethnic militia groups, and targeting jihadists. The congressman described how, if signed into law, the measure would insist on the government “bolstering faith-based organizations’ response in areas impacted by violence.”
According to the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), “between October 2019 and September 2024, ORFA documented 66,656 deaths across Nigeria, of these, 36,056 were civilians. The Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) were responsible for a staggering 47 percent of all civilian killings — more than five times the combined death toll of Boko Haram and ISWAP [Islamic State – West Africa Province], which together accounted for just 11 percent of civilian deaths.”
These killings heavily targeted Christians. ORFA notes that “the data reveals that 2.4 Christians were killed for every Muslim during this period, with proportional losses to Christian communities reaching exceptional levels. In states where attacks occur, Christians were murdered at a rate 5.2 times higher than Muslims relative to their population size.”
Following this terrorism, Nigeria has seen a surge in the number of orphans, with data from SOS Children’s Villages showing 17.5 million now in the country, the second highest globally after India.
The violence against Christians is part of a surge of Islamist terrorist attacks across the Sahel region of West Africa, concentrated in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Northern Nigeria. A report released last year from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point revealed that in 2024, 86 percent of all terrorism-related deaths occurred in just 10 countries, with seven in Africa and five in the Sahel.
Over the weekend, Mali saw terrorist attacks in multiple locations which left Defense Minister Sadio Camara dead and the northeastern town Kidal seized. The strikes came following an alliance between Al-Qaeda-linked terror group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM,) and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a separatist group seeking to establish its own state.
Nigeria released a statement of support for Mali.
“Nigeria stands in solidarity with Mali and reaffirms the enduring ties of brotherhood, shared destiny, and collective resilience that define the African spirit,” said the ministry of foreign affairs’ spokesperson, Kimiebi Ebienfa. “The Federal Government of Nigeria condemns the cowardly acts perpetrated by terrorist groups in different parts of the country in recent days which have resulted in the loss of lives and properties.”
Moore explained that the US bill also appropriates millions to fund International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement to counter FEM violence. “That provision also bolsters support for the establishment of state level police forces so Christians in Plateau and Benue aren’t sitting ducks waiting for help from Abuja,” Moore wrote on X.
Under the legislation, Moore said the secretary of state must “submit a plan for every dollar appropriated to Nigeria, and every dollar spent will have direct congressional oversight.” He added that “in my view, the Tinubu administration has failed to live up to the conditions the appropriations committee placed on security assistance.”
On March 16, three simultaneous explosions hit Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s northeast state Borno, resulting in 25 deaths.
The Nigerian government has previously defended itself against claims of failing to fight terrorism against Christians.
“Recent external claims suggesting systemic religious persecution in Nigeria are unfounded,” Foreign Ministry Permanent Secretary Dunoma Umar Ahmed said in November 2025, in response to warnings from President Donald Trump that the US military might need to intervene. “The state continues to wage a comprehensive counter-terrorism campaign against groups that target Nigerians of all faiths.”
Polling from Pew in 2020 found that 56 percent of Nigerians embraced Islam while 43 percent practice Christianity. However, traditional African religious beliefs also maintain broad influence, with approximately 70 percent of adults believing that spells, curses, and magic can impact people’s lives.
Both Christian and Muslim communities saw substantial growth in Nigeria during the last decade. The Muslim population rose 32 percent from 2010 to 2020, while the Christian population increased 25 percent. Nigeria contains the fifth largest Muslim population and sixth largest Christian population.
Overall, Nigeria has a current total population of 241 million people, making it the most populous country in Africa and sixth highest globally after Indonesia and Pakistan.
On Wednesday, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) released a statement from its leader in response to attacks and kidnappings at a church in Eda Oniyo Ekiti (that left one pastor dead) and at the Yagba West Local Government Area of Kogi State.
“We condemn this heinous act in the strongest possible terms. People had gathered peacefully to worship God, and they were met with violence. This is not just an attack on a church; it is a brutal assault on our shared humanity and the sanctity of life,” Archbishop Daniel Okoh said. “We mourn with the family of the slain Pastor and stand in full solidarity with the victims and the entire Christian community in Ekiti State. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have been taken, and we call for their immediate and safe release.”
The fight to defend Nigerian Christians cuts across the aisle.
“Cracking down on the crisis Christians face in Nigeria has been supported in two appropriations bills by both Republicans and Democrats,” Moore wrote on X, concluding the announcement of the bill. “The United States will not turn a blind eye to the brutal persecution of our Nigerian brothers and sisters in Christ.”
Ebienfa said that “terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, remains a common adversary that demands unified resolve, sustained cooperation and reaffirmation of our shared humanity to tackle.”
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Janet Mills Drops Out of Maine Senate Democratic Primary, Clearing Path for Anti-Israel Candidate Graham Platner
Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks at a campaign town hall meeting in Ogunquit, Maine, US, Oct. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Thursday announced that she is ending her campaign in the Democratic primary for US Senate, a move that effectively clears the path for progressive challenger Graham Platner to secure the nomination in a high-stakes race against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
In a statement, Mills cited the financial demands of a competitive statewide campaign, acknowledging she lacked the resources to continue. Her withdrawal came after weeks of trailing Platner in grassroots fundraising and momentum, despite support from establishment Democrats.
“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills said.
“That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate,” she continued.
The development represents a sharp ideological shift in the Democratic field. Mills, a two-term governor, had been viewed by party leaders as a pragmatic candidate with broad appeal and a traditionally strong stance on US alliances, including support for Israel. Mills’s candidacy failed to gain traction in the state, with observers pointing to a Democratic primary electorate that is both incensed and deeply desirous for a shakeup from the status quo.
Platner, in contrast to Mills, has built his campaign on an anti-establishment message and drawn increasing scrutiny in part for his rhetoric on the Middle East. Some of his past statements criticizing Israel have alarmed more centrist Democrats and foreign policy observers, who argue his framing downplays Israel’s security concerns and risks alienating key constituencies in a general election.
Platner has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza and vowed to vote against further military assistance to the Jewish state. Earlier this month, Platner accused Israel of “exterminating” people in Gaza and refused to clarify his stance on whether Israel should remain a Jewish state. Most of his criticisms of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza omit any mention of the Hamas terrorist organization, framing Israel as an aggressor with intent of wiping out the Palestinian population.
Further, Platner came under scrutiny last year after it was revealed that the Democratic insurgent possesses a tattoo of a Totemkopf — a symbol historically used by Nazi military units. Though Platner has emphatically denied any knowledge of the tattoo’s connections to Nazism, skeptics have pointed out that the oyster farmer identifies as a military historian, raising serious doubts about his claims.
Concerns about Platner’s conduct and Totemkompf tattoo are already emerging as a potential liability in a race Democrats had hoped to make competitive. Collins, a moderate Republican with a long record of electoral success in Maine, has historically attracted independents and crossover voters, groups that could be wary of candidates perceived as ideologically extreme.
Mills’s exit also highlights a broader dynamic within the Democratic Party, as insurgent candidates in several primaries continue to gain traction over more traditional figures. While that energy has reshaped races across the country, it has also raised questions about general election viability in closely divided states.
Many observers have argued that Platner’s ascendance in the Democratic Party serves as another signal that the party is shifting further away from Israel and becoming more tolerant of antisemitism. Across the country, support for Israel has emerged as a litmus test within Democratic primary competitions, with candidates vowing to curtail support for Israel and being pressured to condemn the Jewish state as a perpetrator of “genocide.”
Despite Platner’s vulnerabilities and personal baggage, he has racked up a bevy of endorsements from Democratic power-players such as Rep. Ro Khanna (CA) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA). On Thursday, the Democratic Party officially endorsed Platner as the nominee to take on Collins.
As of now, polling indicates a close race in the Maine general election, with several polls showing Platner with a narrow lead over Collins. However, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has not yet aired ads against Platner, and the Republicans are expected to weaponize Platner’s history of controversial commentary in the lead-up to Election Day in November.