TORONTO (JTA) — Responding to community support, efforts are under way to rescue the Canadian Jewish News from folding.
The board of Canada’s flagship Jewish newspaper this week appointed Marty Goldberg, one of its members, as “chief rescue officer,” to lead the bid to save the print editions in Toronto and Montreal, the newspaper reported Monday. Goldberg is a community activist and philanthropist in Toronto.
The development came in response to an “outpouring of concern and expressions of support” for the paper, Canadian Jewish News President Donald Carr said in a note to readers on May 2.
Two weeks earlier, the paper had announced that it would fold after 53 years, surprising many in Canada’s Jewish community of 375,000. Online petitions and campaigns to save the paper, which was to cease printing on June 20, are seeing strong support.
“So many members of the community, of all ages, all backgrounds, affiliations, non-affiliations and from all corners of the country have spoken to us,” Goldberg told the newspaper. “And we are doing our best to respond.”
His strategy, the newspaper reported, entails refurbishing and updating its approach to subscriptions and subscription revenues; enhancing advertising revenues through new, long-term arrangements with current and prospective advertisers; establishing a safety net of funding to cushion the paper through periods of advertising revenue shortfalls; and streamlining operations.
Goldberg, who met with the paper’s staff on Monday, has given himself a deadline of May 31 to announce whether there will be a new version of the printed Canadian Jewish News.
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