One of my favorite headlines accompanied a story from the JTA a few years back: “Two Jews killed in Turkish earthquake.” Some 10,000 people died in that disaster, but for the Jewish world’s premier new service, the news was the Jews. And what if they didn’t find those two Jewish victims? “Big quake narrowly misses Israel”?

Jokes about Jewish parochialism — “World to end tomorrow; Jews to suffer most” — are as old as the Jewish press. You can’t work for a Jewish publication, or any specialty publication for that matter, without reading every news event through a filter of community self-interest. Sometimes the results are comical, but invariably they are enlightening. Jews are involved enough, and Judaism big enough, to include a universe of subjects and obsessions within their embrace.

But what happens when there’s not much of a “Jewish story” to the big news of the day? Granted, you can always find an angle if you push and stretch things enough (this is a newspaper that recently editorialized on the demotion of Pluto from planet to space rock). But take an event that doesn’t seem to have a lot obvious Jewish components, like the congressional page scandal. Yes, Jews have been pages, and some Jews are no doubt excited that the scandal has been bad news for Republicans. And we could go out and interview teachers and rabbis about how to protect kids from Internet predators. But let’s face it — while the story could lead to a good sermon about transgression and accountability, its possibilities as a rich “Jewish” news story are rather slim.

Then there’s the North Korea nuclear crisis. About the best thing you can say about Kim Jung Il is that he’s one of the few totalitarian nut jobs who doesn’t seem to have a Jewish problem. (Google his name and the word “Jews” and you don’t come up with much. [I suddenly realize how much of my work week is spent Googling the names of things and the word “Jews.”]) Jewish leaders have been commenting on the nuclear test, mostly to worry about the possibility of nukes getting into the hands of terrorists and to wonder how it will affect nuclear arms proliferation in the Middle East. A legitimate news story, although at this point it is speculation about the possible detonation of an unspecified explosive device in a country wrapped in mystery.

I mentioned this to my friend Phil Horn this week, and he helped me see the bright side of Jewish irrelevancy — at least it keeps Israel off the front pages, he said. And more than that: The North Korea crisis is a reminder that, for all the real grievances and suffering, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is not the central crisis facing the world today. Hard to believe after this summer’s war and considering the week-in, week-out coverage of sporadic violence, political turmoil, and failed diplomacy. Throw in the calls for economic and academic boycotts and the attacks on European Jewish institutions, and you’d think the world’s problems would be solved if Israel were to just go away.

I get asked to speak a lot on Israel and the media, by audiences who want me to confirm their worst fears of a media bias against the Jewish state. They don’t want a lecture so much as a ritual event, like Tisha B’Av services or Yom Hashoa commemorations, in which we Jews share our woes and pray that our enemies be smashed and the arrogant made humble. I risk disappointing the organizers not because I think Israel gets a fair deal in the press — it doesn’t — but because I think bias is only a small part of the problem. The biggest part is the combination of access and drama. Israel is small enough that you can cover a war zone in the morning and be back at your three-star hotel for lunch. What’s more, it is an open society that neither censors nor intimidates journalists. There may be bigger crises in the world, but do you have any idea how hard it is to find a restaurant in Darfur that takes MasterCard?

Israelis and Palestinians also oblige the press corps by providing never-ending fodder for news coverage. Terrorists infiltrate across an olive grove, Israeli troops fire back and with any luck kill Palestinians before Palestinians kill Jews. Israeli bulldozers make way for a much-needed security fence, Palestinian farmers cry as their land is sliced in half. And because of the power imbalance, Israel — which has the army, the Western economy, America on its side — invariably comes out looking worse in these disputes. That’s not just anti-Israel bias, but cultural bias: Just try to think of a great piece of literature in which the seemingly more powerful party is the more sympathetic character. That’s just not how we in the West tell stories.

The good news here is not that North Korea has the bomb, but that, for all the talk of an expanding media universe, there’s only so much news you can squeeze onto the front page or a 30-minute news show. The Internet may be a Web, but most people get their news through a funnel.

There’s an upside to media attention — it can even be flattering, depending on the story and who’s doing the telling. And you can argue (I have) that the world’s attention can encourage Israel to make the decisions that are hard to swallow but essential to its long-term viability. Americans might be less inclined to invest so much diplomatic capital and foreign aid in Israel if it did not seem central to America’s foreign policy interests.

Still, I enjoy the days when I can leaf through an entire issue of The New York Times without seeing a single story on Israel or the Jews. I imagine it makes me feel the way other Americans feel on most days: normal.