Cohen Foundation makes gift to newspaper

By Kaplan Tuttlebaum

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The Jewish Review recently received a grant in the amount of $11,700 from the Judith and Edwin Cohen Foundation of Vestal, N.Y.

The grant marks the third consecutive year that this family foundation has provided funding to the Jewish Review—each year in increasing amounts.

In the first year, the grant came unsolicited and as a complete surprise. In both of the following two years the foundation encouraged the Review to apply.

The foundation stipulated from the beginning only that the funds be used generally to build readership of the Review.

To that end, the Cohen Foundation funds were used initially to place news boxes on streets in the Portland area. That project continued when the second grant was made, including placing news boxes in other Oregon cities where there are organized Jewish communities. These included Corvallis, Salem, Eugene, Ashland and Bend. More boxes were placed also in the Portland area.

Business reply cards placed inside the papers that were stocked in the boxes have led to significant increases in requests for home delivery, according to Review Editor Paul Haist.

With the second grant from the Cohen Foundation, the Review also began to acquire more arts and entertainment stories with a Jewish slant, still as part of an effort to attract new readers by offering a category and depth of news and features not previously available on a regular basis in the newspaper.

Haist said the third Cohen Foundation grant will be used exclusively to further expand coverage in the Jewish Review.

The grant comes at a time when the paper is implementing a new business model, said Haist. He added that the expanded coverage the grant will pay for during the first approximately 12 months of the new business plan is a key component of that plan.

“As of the first of the year, the Jewish Review will prepare to resume selling its own advertising,” said Haist. “For the last 14 years, ad sales have been handled for us by Community Newspapers, Inc., a partnership that has been very helpful to the Review.” The transition will be complete on July 1.

The new business plan calls for an ambitious ad-sales effort.

“I want to see the paper become self-sustaining,” said Haist. “To do that, we have to sell a lot more advertising. Potential advertisers want to reach a lot of people. To attract those new readers we are going to offer a wider range of coverage than we have been able to in the past. In the first 12 months of the new plan, the Cohen Foundation funds will enable us to acquire those new and different stories.”

New regular coverage will be added gradually in travel, food, health, business and personal finance, Judaism and singles, said Haist

“These categories aren’t fixed in stone, we want to remain flexible,  be able to replace what doesn’t work with something else that does work,” he said. “But, in the main, adding these sections reflects what the largest and best Jewish newspapers in North America are doing. These changes will help the newspaper to thrive while providing for a better informed Jewish community.”

Some of the new categories of coverage have appeared in the paper in recent months as space has permitted. Religion, for example, has appeared under the banner “Judaism Today,” and travel under its own banner.

“We want to make this expanded coverage part of every Jewish Review. The Cohen Foundation gift will allow us to do that while we are building our ad-sales program. After that, I want these sections to be self-supporting with long-term advertisers who want to be part of those news and feature pages,” said Haist.

With the completion of the transition to the new business model in July, the plan is to add one new category of coverage every other month for 12 months starting with the Aug. 1 edition, and earlier, if possible, said Haist.

The Cohen funds will be expended incrementally in increasing amounts over that time to acquire the new types of stories.

“This wouldn’t be happening now without the Cohen Foundation,” said Haist. “I suspect they didn’t know where their gifts would take us, anymore than I did. But, in focusing their attention on us, I was challenged to think in new ways about how to make the Review grow for our growing community.

“Judaism talks about different categories of philanthropy. It is better, for example, to enable a man to grow his food than merely to give him food. That is what the Cohen Foundation has done with the Jewish Review; they have enabled us. They deserve our gratitude.”