New beginning at old Review

By Paul Haist

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The July 15 edition of the Jewish Review is the first edition produced
under one roof—editorial and advertising—in some 14 years.

It was about 14 years ago that the paper partnered with Community
Newspapers, Inc., to solve a cash-flow problem. Community Newspapers
agreed to sell the ads for us, and print and distribute the paper. In
return, they would keep the ad revenue up to a certain point. That
solved the paper’s financial problem.

The editorial staff could concentrate on writing and, in the process,
it won awards for the paper from the American Jewish Press Association,
the Society of Professional Journalists and the Oregon Newspaper
Publishers Association.

We created the world’s first Jewish newspaper on the Internet. The
Jewish Review went online early in 1994 at www.jewishreview.org. It
will, by the way, be relaunched this month—thanks to a generous grant
from the Oregon Jewish Community Foundation—with more user
functionality while also being able to host online advertising.

Although our relationship with CNI was very helpful, ad sales had
plateaued after a period of time, which meant that the average space
for stories was not growing—one page of advertising generates one page
for stories. We need more pages to provide all the coverage that one
finds in most Jewish newspapers.

When it was demonstrated that the publisher, the Jewish Federation of
Greater Portland, could realize cost savings from our selling our own
ads again, our responsibility to manage this resource as
cost-effectively as possible dictated the course we should follow.

The Jewish Review Committee and the federation’s Governing Board approved the new business plan unanimously.

Now, all we had to do was make it work.

June 30 marked the end of a six-month transition period out of our
partnership with Community Newspapers, a process made easy by CNI’s
consistent cooperation and professionalism.

During the transition, we hired Gail Halladay as our ad-sales
representative. Before the end of the transition period and while CNI
was still selling ads for us, Halladay was able to create new client
relationships with large and small advertisers who had never appeared
in the Jewish Review. This was a good sign, especially in an
increasingly uncertain national economic environment.

With the assistance of a generous grant from the Judith and Edwin Cohen
Foundation of Vestal, New York, we have embarked on a plan to expand
the editorial content of the paper with regular pages devoted to areas
including travel, cuisine, health, young adults, elders and personal
finance, among possible other areas. The grant will pay for acquisition
and placement of stories in these areas for one year while advertising
support is developed for them.

The plan is to add one new area of coverage not less frequently than
every other month for a period of 12 months. We’ll move faster if
possible.

The goal is to build readership with broader coverage and to build advertising with growing readership.

We may change or adapt our new coverage as we learn what works and what
does not. Our readers and our advertisers will tell us what works.

The Jewish Review is well positioned to weather challenging economic
seas. We’ll make sure potential advertisers understand that this paper
is narrowly targeted to a desirable demographic and that when they need
to reach that demographic there is no better place for their call for
action than in the Jewish Review, which also offers a competitive
pricing structure. Coupled with our newly revitalized Web presence, we
aim to reach across the age spectrum of the Jewish community with our
message and the messages our advertisers want delivered.

I hope that you will enjoy the changes coming to your Jewish newspaper.
You can help by telling us what you would like to see in the Jewish
Review.