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Canadian Jewish News ceasing publication

The decision was announced Monday on the publication’s website. The independently owned weekly, which circulates in Montreal and Toronto, will publish its last edition on June 20.   By Tamara Baluja The Canadian Jewish News is shutting down publication in two months. The decision was announced Monday on the publication’s website. The independently owned weekly, which circulates…

The decision was announced Monday on the publication’s website. The independently owned weekly, which circulates in Montreal and Toronto, will publish its last edition on June 20.

 

By Tamara Baluja

The Canadian Jewish News is shutting down publication in two months.

The decision was announced Monday on the publication’s website. The independently owned weekly, which circulates in Montreal and Toronto, will publish its last edition on June 20.

CJN’s president Donald Carr announced in a note to readers the decision to close the newspaper “with great sadness”

“I never dreamed that I would be writing this. No nightmare of mine envisioned it,” he said, saying falling advertisement revenue and competition with free digital news as major obstacles.

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"While we were alert to what was happening around us, we hoped that The CJN, with its “niche” attraction, would not be like others, and that our print edition would survive and flourish," Carr continued. "We made substantial operating changes, which we thought would assist. After careful analysis, we have concluded that they do not."  

Carr said he hoped the newspaper will publish online, “however, The CJN will disappear from your mailboxes and the newsstands.”

The board of directions made the decision to shut down on April 19, while “there were still assets on hand with which to provide meaningful severance to the newspaper’s employees and to wind up operations properly.”

The Canadian Jewish News was founded some 42 years ago by businessman and philanthropist Ray Wolfe with a mission was “to serve the Jewish People, in Canada, in Israel and in all its habitations.”

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Tamara Baluja is an award-winning journalist with CBC Vancouver and the 2018 Michener-Deacon fellow for journalism education. She was the associate editor for J-Source from 2013-2014.