About Frogi

Frogi

Frogi is a Hebrew-language youth news and entertainment website in Israel, published by the Yedioth Ahronoth Group through Ynet. What makes it unusual among Israeli news sites is stated plainly in the group's own description of it: at Frogi, only teenagers write. The site is written and edited by young people aged 15 to 18, for readers of their own generation, covering news, culture and entertainment, music, sport, digital life and fashion in the language and at the speed of Israeli youth culture. Based with the Yedioth group in Rishon LeZion, Frogi functions as the youth arm of Israel's largest media group, and as a first newsroom for the teenagers who staff it.

Founded independently on 1 January 2011

Frogi was not created inside a media group. It was founded on 1 January 2011 by Alex Nester and Alon Albahari as an independent youth site. A month later the public-relations man Yoni Wolf joined them, together with Yarden Mas, later Cohen, who edited the site in its first year and was part of the founding team alongside Nester, Wolf and Albahari. Between 2012 and 2013 Hadar Ben Shimol served as the site's editor. The venture belonged to a recognisable moment in Israeli digital media: young founders building a title for their own age group, outside the established newspaper groups, and proving an audience that the established groups would later want to own.

The editorial formula set at the start endured. Frogi's subject matter is the world of teenagers as its app description puts it: what has happened with the young actors and singers teenagers follow, school stories, television series, music and celebrity news, presented as youth news rather than as adult entertainment journalism filtered down. Its name and tone signal playfulness, but its structure is that of a news site, with sections and continuous updating rather than a magazine that appears at intervals.

Acquisition by Ynet in August 2013

In August 2013 Frogi was acquired by Ynet, the news site of the Yedioth Ahronoth Group. Globes, reporting on the later youth-media market, summarised the deal's logic: Frogi had been founded about four years earlier as an independent site and was then bought by Ynet as part of its wish to reach a younger audience. Inside Ynet's own account of its subsidiary sites, the arrangement is described in one line: in 2013 the youth site Frogi was attached to Ynet, where only teenagers write, in sections including news, culture and entertainment, music, sport, digital and fashion.

Group ownership brought a redesign, in February 2014, and a succession of professional editors-in-chief working with the teenage staff. In 2014 Ran Finkelstein, who had edited the youth site Rosh1, was appointed Frogi's editor-in-chief and served until his departure in September 2016. Ortal Cohen-Levi was then appointed editor-in-chief in his place. In April 2022 Moshe Abutbul was appointed editor-in-chief of the site. The pattern is a hybrid one unusual in Israeli media: a youth-written publication supervised, within the country's biggest news group, by editors recruited from youth publishing itself.

A newsroom staffed by 15- to 18-year-olds

Frogi's defining institutional fact is the age of its writers. The site is written and edited by young people aged 15 to 18, a model set out in Hebrew reference works and in Ynet's description of the site. That model shapes both content and purpose. The reporters cover the culture they themselves consume — youth television series, young singers, school life and social media — with an insider's knowledge no adult desk could reproduce, and the site in turn serves as a training ground in which Israeli teenagers learn reporting, editing and publishing inside a professional group before they reach army service or university.

The publisher behind the consumer products is the group's technology arm. The Frogi application is offered by Yediot Information Technologies Ltd, the Yedioth group's digital company, from the group's address at 1 Noah Mozes Street, Rishon LeZion, with the site's contact address at info@frogi.co.il. That corporate detail matters for understanding Frogi's position: it is not a fan project hosted by a media group, but a fully integrated Yedioth product, produced with the group's technology and distributed through the group's channels.

Sections, series and the youth culture beat

Frogi's coverage, as described in its own app listing, provides news from the world of teenagers and a catch-up on what is new and interesting, together with full episodes of the series its audience loves. The listing names the youth dramas Galis, Shchuna, the Neighbourhood, and Susim Peraim, Wild Horses, and promises guest stars and singers in the studio and other exclusive content. The site's magazine channel mixes entertainment reporting with material pitched at teenage life directly, from interviews with Olympic athletes to advice features on subjects such as why teenagers should not belittle their hours of sleep and school graduation projects.

News is part of the mix as well. Frogi carries general Israeli news rewritten for its readership: when the veteran television journalist and military commentator Roni Daniel died in July 2021, Frogi's news section reported it, credited to Ynet reporter Ran Booker, in its magazine and news categories. The site thus operates on two levels at once, as a youth entertainment title in its own right and as the Yedioth group's translation layer between the national news agenda and a teenage audience.

The Frogi Choice awards

Each year Frogi announces its readers' choices for the culture and entertainment figures of the past year, and since 2017 those choices have been presented at a ceremony called the Frogi Choice ceremony, held in the studio in the presence of the winners. In 2017 to 2019 the ceremony was also broadcast on the ZOOM channel and uploaded to video on demand. The recorded winners map Israeli youth culture of the period with unusual precision. Eliana Tidhar was chosen leading actress for 2015, 2016 and 2017; Tuval Shafir was leading actor for 2015; Daniel Litman held that title in 2016 and 2017, and Omer Hazan in 2019, when Gaia Gur Arie was leading actress and Adi Alon actor of the year. Noa Kirel was chosen singer of the year in 2016, 2019, 2020 — the year she also won song of the year for Pouch — and 2021, while Eden Ben Zaken and Omer Adam were the female and male singers of 2017.

The ceremony also gives an Egg Icon award, chosen by the site's editors, to key figures in the world of youth culture. Its recipients have included the entertainer Tzipi Shavit and the creators Uri Gross and Giora Chamizer, the latter responsible for many Israeli youth series including HaShminiya, The Octet, HaYi, The Island, HaHamama, The Greenhouse, and the game show Shtus. An awards institution of this kind turns a website into an authority inside its niche: Frogi does not only report on Israeli youth culture, it formally crowns it each year, with the winners attending in person.

The 50 biggest youth stars list

Frogi's second annual institution is its list of the 50 biggest youth stars of Israel, compiled and ranked by the site's staff and published every Independence Day since 2016. In 2018 the list was enlarged, as a one-off, to 70 stars for the state's 70th anniversary celebrations, and that year Noa Kirel was crowned Israel's leading youth star. In 2019 the ranking did not take place. In 2020 the character of the list was changed, again as a one-off: instead of a ranking by places, the site chose the 30 most influential youth stars of the coronavirus period and its surroundings. Together, the awards and the list give Frogi a calendar of set-piece editorial events, built for sharing among exactly the audience the site serves.

The Frogi app and mobile reading

On 25 July 2016 the Frogi smartphone application was launched. Its store description presents Frogi as a leading Israeli youth site from Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth, which provides news from the world of teenagers, and invites readers to catch up with what is new and interesting and to watch full episodes of beloved series, guest stars and singers in the studio and exclusive content available only in the app. The app's continued maintenance is documented in its update history, with bug fixes and speed and user-experience improvements. For a readership of 15- to 18-year-olds, mobile distribution is not an extra channel but the primary one, and Frogi's presence as a maintained app from the group's own technology company reflects that.

Place in the Yedioth group and Israeli youth media

Frogi sits inside a deliberate portfolio. The Yedioth Ahronoth Group owns Ynet, Israel's most popular internet portal since 2008, the Calcalist financial title, magazines including Pnai Plus and LaIsha, the local-news network Mynet and book publisher Yedioth Books; within that portfolio Frogi is the designated youth title, listed among the group's outlets alongside Ynet and Pnai Plus. Its acquisition in 2013 pre-dated Ynet's 2015 purchase of the popular children's site Mikmak, and together the two purchases gave the group coverage of Israeli readers from childhood through the teenage years into the adult Ynet audience.

For a directory of online news, Frogi's interest lies in that combination of scale and specificity. It is a small title by subject — teenagers, their series, their singers, their schools — produced by teenagers themselves, yet it is backed by the infrastructure, technology arm and distribution of Israel's largest newspaper group, based at the group's Rishon LeZion home. Israeli youth media has few comparable institutions, and none with quite that structure: an independent youth start-up of 2011, bought by Ynet in 2013, that still publishes in 2026 under the same name, the same youth-written model and the same annual rituals of awards and star rankings.