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ERIC SILVER
Special to The Jewish News
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Goodman
sees his task
as to "bring
the Post back
to being a
state
and
local
government leaders,
members of congress and
representatives of Israel's Knesset.
Your advertising in this issue will
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DETROIT
JEWISH NIEWS
srael's two leading English-lan-
guage publications, the daily
erusalem Post and the bi-weekly
Jerusalem Report, are joining
forces. If the two parent companies
mean what they say, it will be a mar-
riage of convenience rather than a
fully fledged merger. Each will keep its
identity.
Conrad Black's Canadian media
group, Hollinger, has bought 49 per
cent of the Jerusalem Report from
Seagram tycoon Charles Bronfman
and his four interna-
tional partners, who
launched the Report
eight years ago. The
news magazine's editor
in chief, Hirsh
Goodman, will join
the Post as executive
vice president. He will,
however, retain his
Report column and
will join its board. The
Post's publisher,
Norman Spector, will
become the Report's
chief executive in addi-
tion to his current
responsibilities.
David Horowitz, the Report's 35-
year-old managing editor, will succeed
Goodman in the editor's chair. Both
Goodman and Horowitz made their
names as Jerusalem Post writers and
have been loudly critical of the paper's
performance since Conrad Black took
it over in 1989. The British-born
Horowitz, a graduate of the Hebrew
University, has played a key role in
shaping the Report as a highly-profes-
sional, if loss-making, journal covering
Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish
world.
The main savings from what is
billed as a "strategic alliance" are, to
quote Norman Spector, that "both
organizations will benefit from admin-
istrative, advertising and circulation
consolidation, from cross-promotional
synergies."
An earlier courtship between the
Post and the Report fell through a year
ago when it became clear that
Hollinger was looking for a takeover
rather than a partnership. The differ-
ence this time is that Bronfman and
company retain a majority holding. In
the new set-up, Spector, a former
Canadian ambassador to Israel, will be
in charge of the business side.
Goodman will be the editorial czar,
with an initial goal to raise the Post's
standards and reputation.
"Editorial independence will be
total," Spector said. "We have no
desire, nor interest, in eroding the
distinctive identities of the two pub-
lications. It would make neither
journalistic sense, nor business sense.
The two publications serve different
audiences and don't conflict in terms
of frequency. They are separate pub-
lications, and we intend to keep
them that way."
There will be no crossover of edito-
rial staffs. Since Spector joined the
Post as publisher a year ago, he and his
editor, Jeff Barak, have moved it closer
to the political center.
It is no longer the stri-
dent right-wing publi-
cation it was under
David Bar-Illan (now
Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu's
media adviser) and
publisher Yehuda
Levy. But Spector
acknowledges that its
core readership among
English-speaking .
immigrants tends to
the religious right,
and the Post will con-
tinue to take their
tastes and interests into account.
For the same essentially commercial
considerations, the Report will remain
a magazine of the liberal Zionist left.
Each will be looking over its shoulder
at the English-language edition of
Hakretz, which now appears daily in
Israel in association with the
International Herald Tribune. The
launch last year of the English
Ha'aretz, under another Jerusalem Post
graduate David Landau, has already
spurred the Post to widen its scope and
brighten its presentation. The focus
will now shift to content.
Goodman, a well-known figure on
the American Jewish lecture circuit,
sees his task as to "bring the Post back
to being a great title." As at the Report,
he will try to draw a sharper line
between reportage and commentary.
"I am going to take 30 years' experi-
ence in journalism and get the right
people working with me," he
explained. "I'm going to disappoint
those people who put a political tag
on me. I am a professional, and that's
what I intend to apply.
"I want to create a regime where
reporters are double-sourcing their
material and giving the readers news
straight down the line. I don't want
great title."