The Jewish Ledger has been part of the fabric of this community for 80 years. Founded in 1929, by Samuel Neusner and Rabbi Abraham J. Feldman, the Ledger has had only four owners throughout the past eight decades. Bert and Adele Gaster guided the paper from 1977 until the early 90’s, passing ownership briefly to the Jewish Media Group of Florida, which was succeeded a few years later by the current publisher, NRG Connecticut.

Increasingly, the environment for newspapers has become more challenging; a trend that has been accelerating of late. In addition, the demographics of the Jewish community continue to undergo dynamic changes in a number of ways. Despite this, the Ledger has managed to thrive, grow and adapt to the new realities of our marketplace and provide a quality product responsive to the needs of our loyal core of readers. Besides our printed publications, newsprint and glossy, we also maintain a dynamic web site which distributes our content to a growing audience throughout the state and beyond.
Being privately owned, the Ledger is self-supported with subscription income and revenue from advertising. Most Jewish publications are owned by Federations and rely solely on their community organizations for operating funds: the Ledger has never burdened the community, working instead with a business model that provides its own income. Despite this financial independence, the Ledger has always worked hard to maintain a respectful partnership with the community, providing editorial content that fosters Jewish continuity and communal pride. It is now, as it was when it was founded, a Zionist-centered publication that focuses on Israel almost as much as it does on the local community.
While the current environment continues to challenge us, we are confident that we can and will continue to provide content that is meaningful to our readers and helps sustain vibrant Jewish life in our communities. To help us meet that goal in today’s business environment, however, we recognize the importance of finding other avenues of growth. We need to consider changes in our own structure to strengthen and improve our business. We’ve also concluded that, going forward, we have to reach out and find additional resources to guide this effort over the coming years.
To accomplish this we are positioned to consider a range of alternatives: whether that involves absorbing a new partnership into our business or some other business combination that fits our mission. We’d also entertain the idea of new ownership if there is an individual or group that shares our commitment to community publishing for the Jewish community.
We welcome your thoughts and suggestions. To discuss this further, please contact me at nrg41942@aol.com.

Ricky Greenfield
Publisher
Connecticut Jewish Ledger

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