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IV

hat happened physically
is a nightmare," Arthur .
Horwitz told the Jewish
News staff Monday.
It was less than 12 hours after the
devastating Jan. 27 fire was extin-
guished at the newspaper's Franklin
Road offices in Southfield.
"But it won't keep us from doing
what we've been doing for 60 years,
which is to publish a paper on Friday."
Horwitz is publisher of the Jewish News
and president of Jewish Renaissance
Media, which since 2000 has owned the
Jewish News, the Atlanta Jewish Times,
Style magazine and JN SourceBook.
It was that same defiant attitude that
led to the founding of the Jewish News
60 years ago by the late Philip Slomovitz.
Slomovitz felt he was unjustly fired
after 20 years as editor of Detroit's Jewish
Chronicle and in early 1942 — just
months after Pearl Harbor and as news
began leaking out of Europe about a mas-
sive Nazi Holocaust — he pooled his
own resources with loans from prominent
local Jews to open his own newspaper.
Included in that first edition on
March 27, 1942, was a column, "Jewish
Youths' Listening Post" by Danny
Raskin. In March, Raskin will celebrate
60 years with the paper as a local
columnist and advertising executive.
During those six decades, the newspa-
per has grown, evolved and prospered.
From 24 pages in that initial issue, the
paper has published 240-page Rosh
Hashanah editions in recent years. From
three homes in Detroit (the Penobscot
Building and the David Stott Building
downtown, to West Seven Mile Road),
the newspaper moved to three different
offices in Southfield (the former
Honeywell Building on Nine Mile and
the Lodge Freeway, the former Control
Data Building on Civic Center Drive
near Evergreen, and the Regency Office
Centre on Franklin Road).
In 1984, the Slomovitz family sold
the Jewish. News to a group led by
Charles A. Buerger, publisher of the
Baltimore Jewish Times. The newspaper
went through immediate design
changes and placed increased emphasis
on local news coverage of the Jewish
community. In 1993, its editor, Gary

Rosenblatt, left to become editor and
publisher of the New York Jewish Week
and Phil Jacobs subsequently became
editor of the Jewish News.
Slomovitz continued to come into
the office and write his Purely
Commentary columns until his death
in 1993 at the age of 96.
In November 1996, Buerger died
after heart surgery, setting in motion a
chain of events affecting the Jewish
News. Jacobs the next year returned to
Baltimore as editor of the Jewish Times
and Robert Sklar was brought in from
the suburban Detroit Observer 6-
Eccentric Newspapers to become editor
of the Jewish News.
Arthur Horwitz, who had been
brought in by Buerger from the daily
Baltimore Sun as associate publisher of
the Jewish News in 1986, began a new
entity in February 2000 to purchase
the paper from Baltimore-based
Waterspout Communications.
Southfield-based Jewish Renaissance
Media (JRM), with the support of
Jewish philanthropist Michael
Steinhardt as chairman, and Horwitz as
president, completed the purchase of
the Jewish News, the Atlanta Jewish
Times, Style magazine and the JN
SourceBook in February 2000.
JR1VI's goal is to become the premiere
source of news and information for and
about the American Jewish community.
Last year, JRM also acquired a national
Web site Jewish.com to complement
the online activities of the Detroit and
Atlanta papers.
The company, headquartered in
Southfield, reports on the diversity of
American Jewish life with the goal of
promoting greater unity and continuity.
Horwitz is certain the Jewish News
will continue to achieve its goal of
serving the community. Last
Monday, meeting with his staff at the
Embassy Suites Hotel just a few
blocks from the fire devastation, he
said, "This is the Jewish News right
here — it's the people.
"We may have to spread out where
we are [right now] and where we do
things, but we'll still put out a product
that everyone can be proud oE"

❑

— Jewish Renaissance Media National
Editor Jonathan Friendly
contributed to this report.

