So you’re the owner of the only Jewish newspaper in town. That’s the good news. The bad news is readership is stagnant, the name sounds like it’s produced in a synagogue basement, and that elusive young audience giving traditional media such a tough time isn’t flocking to you either.
Seven years ago, Cynthia Ramsay, now 36, was one of three partners who bought into the Jewish Western Bulletin. A former economist with the Fraser Institute, she is now the paper’s sole owner and last year changed the name of the weekly to Jewish Independent.
One reason for the name change was to clarify longstanding confusion that the paper is still part of the Jewish Community Centre in Vancouver (it was founded as such in the 1920s but went private in 1960). “We weren’t just a bulletin, we were a newspaper that reported on Israel news, other world news and local news as well,” Ramsay says.
Another reason was to reach a national audience. With about 23,000 Jews in B.C. and 10,000 already reading the Independent, growth is pretty well “maxed out.” Circulation numbers have stayed about the same over the years and Ramsay says the most frequent reasons given for cancellation are “moving” or “not enough time.” Ramsay says the paper has struggled to keep subscriptions steady by increasing distribution. “We are trying to give it away more, thinking people will find it interesting and will pick it up.”
Ramsay also wants to appeal to a younger demographic but admits “it’s a bit of a juggling act because the main supporters of the paper are still older people and you can’t alienate the over 50 or 60 crowd so we have had to make the transition more slowly.”
She may want to take a page from Mehfil. While it’s a glossy bi-monthly magazine, it has had some of the same challenges. It’s printed in English and targets the South Asian market. Rana Vig, publisher, says a fashion spread in each issue appeals to younger readers as do two columns-one that features a top athlete, the other a top student. The other thing that helps is a brightly painted community cruiser that travels with a street team to concerts and youth events.
Still, he says, while Mehfil has regular advertisers like Vancity, Telus and Harmony Airways, it tends to get passed over by media agencies. “They still don’t get it,” he says. “It doesn’t take much to understand, if you live in Vancouver and Toronto, the mix and the power of the East Indian community.”
In fact, says Jatinder Rai, general manager of Response Advertising, a multicultural advertising agency in Richmond, B.C., Chinese newspapers such as Ming Pao and Sing Tao that are traditionally more adult oriented also struggle to get Asian youth to read the newspaper. “They are finding that the media is too traditional for them,” he says, adding Mehfil is one publication that appeals to the youth market. “The market in that sense is my generation. I’m in my mid-30s and we want to be communicated to in English, but we want some element to it that pertains to our culture.”
The problem that a paper like the Jewish Independent faces when it comes to advertisers, Rai adds, is convincing advertisers that they won’t overlap and hit the same market by advertising in the mainstream press.
