Moving In With The Parents

“The best way for JFL to proceed — and, in fact, to fulfill its mission — would be to find continuity for its projects ... and sunset the organization,” says Amir Cohen CEO of JFL Media.

“The best way for JFL to proceed — and, in fact, to fulfill its mission — would be to find continuity for its projects ... and sunset the organization,” says Amir Cohen CEO of JFL Media.

by Tamar Snyder
Staff Writer

Hip, Jewish new media outlets have been rescued — for the time being. But the question on everyone’s minds is whether they will survive in the long term.

Jewcy.com, the irreverent — and for several months, floundering — online magazine catering to a large cross-section of Jews, announced two weeks ago that it would be adopted by JDub, the Jewish record label. The next day, JFL Media, an incubator for innovative educational print and online media, confirmed that it would be shutting its doors.

In a bold move that may become more common in the Jewish nonprofit world, JFL Media gave each of its four publications to other players. Last month, JFL announced that the pluralistic journal Sh’ma would be published by The Lippman Kanfer Family Foundation, initial supporters of the project. And Ken Gordon, the editor of JBooks.com, an online community dedicated to Jewish books, took over JBooks and is keeping it afloat with the help of a grant from the Koret Foundation.

JFL’s remaining two media properties — JVibe.com, an online magazine for Jewish teens, and BabagaNewz.com, an online educational portal for congregational schools and day school students and teachers — have found new homes, as well. Jvillage Network, a startup that provides membership solutions and Web design support to Jewish nonprofits, will take over the similar-sounding JVibe.com. And Berhman House, publishers of Hebrew school educational materials, will be adopting BabagaNewz.com.

“At our board retreat [at the beginning of May], it was decided that the best way for JFL to proceed — and, in fact, to fulfill its mission — would be to find continuity for its projects, preferably with as many of its staff, and sunset the organization,” Amir Cohen, CEO of JFL Media, told the Jewish Week.

Cohen, who is contemplating his next steps, strongly believes that “there aren’t a lot of organizations that have the mission, ‘Thou shalt provide a job for the board and executive directors.’”

“It was weird to recommend a fate that is possibly very positive for everyone except myself,” said Cohen, who was on the board of JFL before assuming the role of CEO. “But it was the right thing to do.”

Instead of “living another six months and then abruptly shutting down,” Cohen said that JFL’s board met every two weeks since the retreat, and spent the past six months talking with potential adoptive parents for its publications. “We developed task teams and discussed potential profit margins; in some cases, there was more than one suitor for the program,” he said. “We were preparing the sort of documents you’d prepare in a business merger and acquisition environment.”

These relationships weren’t established overnight.

Alisa Silverman, who wrote the initial business plan and founded JVibe several years ago, now works as the design & content director at Jvillage Network, which adopted JVibe. “She calls [JVibe] an old flame,” Cohen says. And according to Jvillage Network CEO Mike Kanarick, “JVibe will allow our Jvillage Network members — synagogues, schools, camps or other Jewish nonprofits — to tap into the collective energy of their teen communities.”

The BabagaNewz/ Berhman House connection was brokered by Yossi Prager at the Avi Chai Foundation, which had been a key funder of the project. In taking over BabagaNewz, “I suspect that Berhman House has cut their adoption to digital media by a number of years,” says Cohen. During the past year, Berhman House has collaborated with BabagaNewz on several projects, including games for students. “This makes the relationship more extensive and permanent,” says David Berhman, Berhman House’s publisher.

And Josh Rolnick, the former managing editor of Moment magazine and Sh’ma’s new publisher, spent the past two years on the advisory board of Sh’ma. He also serves on the board of trustees of the Lippman Kanfer Family Foundation. “Sh’ma is the only theme-based pluralistic journal published in the Jewish world today. It has a rich history, and the unique ability to be a thought leader on issues of importance to the Jewish community,” he says. “Our foundation has long supported Sh’ma both financially and strategically. We admire its fierce independence and thought-provoking voice. The journal fits squarely with our foundation’s mission to promote Jewish education.”

Nina Bruder, the executive director of the incubator Bikkurim, says that Bikkurim has never held that an independent, freestanding organization is the only way to go. “We define success as any way of keeping the innovative initiative going in the most impactful and transformative way,” she says. “If that means merging, so be it. If it means being adopted by another organization, so be it. We don’t have a singular model.” In fact, most startups launch only after trying, unsuccessfully, to find a suitable home. “It’s much more work, handling the back office and administrative headaches.” (Bikkurim has yet to incubate a Jewish online magazine or blog. “We’ve never been convinced that recreating another new Web portal was really the answer,” Bruder says.)

JFL’s strategically planned “sunset” may well offer a valuable lesson to other Jewish nonprofits. “Every philanthropically based Jewish organization should work on lists for each of their programs, and know which other organizations are potential collaborators,” Cohen said. “In 1995, [as associate publisher at The New Jersey Jewish News] I started merging newspapers in New Jersey. Now, a lot more people are thinking about it because they don’t have a choice.”

While Cohen concedes that organizations “shouldn’t run away or dissolve at the first sign of problems,” it’s important to “fundraise to the mission — not to keep jobs.” “There’s a lifecycle for an organization; some of those published in the 2009-2010 Slingshot [a directory of cutting-edge startup Jewish organizations] might in three, five, or 10 years find themselves less relevant.”

While “great synergy is being created” in the Jewish nonprofit world, “however fast it is, it’s not enough,” Cohen said. “Before long, Jewcy and JDub will need to merge into something else.”

JDub COO Jacob Harris doesn’t quite see it that way. “We’re the first to admit that it’s a tough economic climate,” he says. “For us, Jewcy is such an amazing brand. There was no way we could let it die.” A capacity-building grant of under $100,000 from the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles will help JDub re-launch Jewcy with new functionality next spring.

Nearly 50 percent of the nonprofit record label’s budget comes from revenue from its events and its online store, which sells apparel, CDs and digital music downloads. “We monetize where we can to support our mission,” Harris says.

JDub has also developed a strategic content partnership with Repair The World, a national nonprofit that serves as a portal for American Jewish service learning programs. Jewcy, under JDub’s ownership, will feature content from these programs as well as invite participants to blog about their experiences and issues such as hunger and homelessness. “In the last online survey of 1,000 JDub participants, we learned that 20 percent participated in Jewish service learning programs after the age of 18,” Harris says. “We’d love to see that number grow.”

E-mail: tamar@jewishweek.org

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