The World — '..::. Jerusalem, Ink • ,1, . ;01 - ' .:s — < $ ERIC SILVER Special to The Jewish News DAVID BEN-GURION Be a pari of the Jewish N ews Celebration of the State of Israel at 50• y The Jewish News' in-depth reflection of the State of Israel at 50 will be showcased in a very special theme issue on Friday, May 1, 1998. This keepsake issue will be enthusiastically received by 50,000 Jewish News readers, • A , K — The space deadline is April 10 1998. For more information, please call your account executive or Shari Cimino at (248) 354-6060 ext. 208. , Professional portraits by your neighborhood studio. V. 4/10 1998 44 .4:10,10 Call The Sales Department (248) 354-7123 Ext. 209 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 truly be memorable as you celebrate Israel's past and help shape it's future. Y Advertise in our new Entertainment Section! 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."