Jewish papers managing survival

MYRON LOVE

The announcement by the Canadian Jewish News board of directors in early April that the Jewish newspaper of record for Toronto and Montreal was shutting down its print edition at the end of June sent shock waves across the country. It launched an effort to save the paper and, it seems, that the CJN print version will continue to exist, resuming publication in August, after a break to reorganize its business model.

With correspondents and columnists in Halifax, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria, the CJN is the closest thing that Canada’s Jewish community has had to a national paper. (The much smaller B’nai Brith Jewish Tribune does provide some national and international coverage in addition to news about B’nai Brith activities across the country.)

In announcing the paper’s troubles, Donald Carr, chair of the board of directors of the 42-year-old publication, reported that advertising – the lifeblood of a newspaper – had really dropped off since the beginning of the year. “We hadn’t been making a profit for a few years,” he said. “We tried making some adjustments on the expenditure side, but it didn’t help.”

In announcing the CJN’s survival, Carr said that the paper will be “acting upon the recommendations of an expert adviser who has given us a viable blueprint for continuing,” including relocating its offices and charging more for subscriptions.

The CJN is one of just four independently owned Jewish newspapers across Canada. (There are also federation-affiliated papers serving the Jewish communities in Ottawa, Hamilton and Edmonton.) While the Jewish Independent in Vancouver, the Jewish Free Press in Calgary and Winnipeg’s own Jewish Post & News are facing the same challenges as the CJN – and most other North American newspapers – issues such as how to attract younger readers, rising costs and competition from the Internet, they are holding their own.

The key to survival is to operate with minimal staff and, in the words of Jewish Post & News publisher/editor Bernie Bellan, cut a good deal with your printer. Bellan also saved a lot of money by switching the delivery of papers from Canada Post to the Winnipeg Free Press.

The Jewish Post & News, whose origins go back to 1925, is Canada’s oldest surviving independently owned Jewish newspaper. Vancouver’s Jewish Western Bulletin (now called the Jewish Independent) was also started in 1925, as a Vancouver Jewish Community Centre bulletin, becoming a newspaper in 1930. In 1960, former Winnipeggers Sam and Mona Kaplan took the paper over from the JCC, and they owned it for more than 35 years. In the latter half of the 1990s, an American publishing group ran the paper, and current JI owner/publisher Cynthia Ramsay acquired the paper from the Kaplans about 15 years ago, originally as part of an ownership group.

As is the case with the JP&N (with a full-time salaried staff of office manager Tove Silver, part-time graphic designer Diana Vincent and a number of freelancers and commissioned people), the JI runs a lean operation. “The editor and I comprise the editorial side, with about five regularly contributing freelancers,” Ramsay said. “I have two sales executives who come into the office and three very part-time, commission-only salespeople. I have help with the books a few hours a week for the A/R and subscriptions, but have an accountant who does the year-end stuff and a company that does the payroll.”

The JI comes out 49 times a year, basically weekly, except for the first week of January and the first two weeks of August. The JP&N reduced its run to 26 weeks a year several years back because advertising revenue didn’t support a weekly paper. Calgary’s JFP also publishes every second week. (By comparison, the 75-year-old Ottawa Jewish Bulletin publishes 19 times a year – with just one issue for December/January and one issue for June/July/August – while the Hamilton Jewish News comes out four or five times a year.)

Richard Bronstein, the Jewish Free Press owner/publisher for the past 10 years, reported that his paper is delivered to 2,000 homes in the Calgary area. Ramsay said that the Independent prints a couple of thousand copies a week and has more than 40 depots throughout the Lower Mainland where people can pick up the paper for free. The JP&N also distributes a number of free copies each issue, but when and where they are put out is at Bellan’s discretion.

Ramsay said that her paper was hit hard by the recession, as many advertisers suffered losses. “We’ve slowly been recovering each year since the end of November 2009 (our fiscal year is Dec. 1-Nov. 30),” she said in an e-mail interview, “but we haven’t reached pre-2009 levels. Revenue is the largest issue, of course. We’d like to run more stories from the local, national and international Jewish world, but are limited by a lack of financial resources.

“On the cost side, I have cut almost every expense that I can, but still need to lower distribution costs. I don’t want to cease mail delivery because much of our mailed circulation is older readers who have supported us, literally, for decades, and they are not as mobile as they once were; also, advertisers benefit from having an audience that has purchased the paper and receives it because they want it and, therefore, read it cover to cover. I know of several free papers in Vancouver that just get dumped on people’s doorsteps and never get read.”

Added Ramsay, “The revenue side has been increasing over the last few years through the hard work of our sales personnel, but it will never be what it once was for newspapers in general. The niche of being a community-oriented paper has allowed us in large measure to survive thus far, I think, in addition to putting out the best product we can – we’ve won three American Jewish Press Awards this year, and have consistently won one or more awards since I’ve owned/co-owned the business.”

For Winnipeg and Calgary, the advertising has held up through the recession. “We have had good support from the business community,” said Bronstein. “No one is getting rich though.”

While senior readership has been holding up for all three papers, the daunting challenge is how to attract younger readers. “With respect to readers, our mailing list tends to be older readers,” Ramsay said, “but the late-20-somethings, and even 30-somethings, are our main online and depot readers.

“I have dragged my feet somewhat on the website upgrade because making money online has proved elusive to most, if not all, newspapers, large and small, and I just haven’t seen any data to convince me that the expenditure would be worthwhile financially,” she noted. “However, there are other objectives to be achieved from making our online presence more interactive, controversial and frequent (now we just upload stories once a week). I’ve been working out exactly what those objectives would be for the Jewish Independent and [have been] meeting with web designers ... to lay out a strategy that connects, but also differentiates, our online presence, our e-paper version and the physical newspaper.”

Bronstein spoke of the need to transition to an electronic platform but said that he is not convinced that being online will prove to be the salvation for Jewish newspapers.

Bellan agreed that the business side of operating a website is problematic. “We get a lot of visits to our website from former Winnipeggers,” Bellan noted. “And we are attracting ever more viewers.” But Bellan and Bronstein both said that most advertisers still prefer print, believing that they get a bigger bang for their buck in a traditional newspaper.

Bellan also cautioned about showing too much content on the website. “I think one of the problems for the Canadian Jewish News is that their website was so comprehensive that there was no need for readers to subscribe to the paper,” he said.

When it looked as if the CJN was closing, Carr said that one option was to carry on with just an Internet publication. However, as a result of the groundswell of support since the decision to close was made public, the CJN print edition has been saved – ironically, by an Internet-driven campaign (savethecjn.com). Bronstein is confident that newspapers can remain viable for at least a few more years but, he wondered, “Who knows what will be in 10 years from now though.”

Myron Love is a freelance writer who currently writes for between 30 and 40 different publications, covering a wide range of subjects. He writes a weekly auto-dealer column in the Winnipeg Free Press and a people column in the Jewish Post & News, where this article was first published.

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