TORONTO (JTA) — Canada’s flagship Jewish newspaper, The Canadian Jewish News, is folding.
The newspaper, which has a circulation of approximately 40,000, announced Monday that its final print edition will be June 20. The closure will mean the loss of about 50 jobs.
"I never dreamed that I would be writing this," CJN President Donald Carr wrote on the paper’s website Monday announcing the end of publication. "No nightmare of mine envisioned it."
Carr cited "the ravages that printed newspapers and magazines have been experiencing across the world."
"The digital age, in which news and commentary are retrieved instantly on smart phones, on computers and on all kinds of new devices, has overtaken the printed word," he wrote, .
Carr, effectively the paper’s publisher, also said that advertisers are reluctant to place ads in printed publication and that the poor economic situation has left businesses with less money for advertising.
He said the CJN had made "substantial operating changes, which we thought would assist. After careful analysis, we have concluded that they do not."
Founded in 1960, the paper was purchased in 1971 by a group of community leaders closely allied with the Canadian Jewish Congress.
It was not immediately clear whether the online edition would continue.
"That is our hope," Carr said. "However, The CJN will disappear from your mailboxes and the newsstands."
The CJN was distributed in Toronto, with a Montreal edition. There are smaller, regional Jewish publications across Canada, but the paper was seen as national and independent.
The closure will leave The Jewish Tribune, published by B’nai Brith Canada, as the community’s sole non-regional Jewish publication.
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