The St. Louis Jewish Light has been selected to participate in a new, year-long Jewish Journalism Fellowship, designed to help local Jewish news outlets thrive in the 21^st-century media landscape. The goal of this coordinated initiative is to find more sustainable and impactful ways to deliver content so that the Light can better serve and reflect the St. Louis Jewish community.

A project of the Maimonides Fund, the Jewish Journalism Fellowship will bring together a cohort of local Jewish news organizations in strengthening their capabilities in the areas of audience development, organizational sustainability and Jewish community engagement.

In addition to the Light, the other participating publications are Cleveland Jewish News, J. – The Jewish News of Northern California, Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and TC (Twin Cities) Jewfolk. Participants will learn and apply digital best practices, new business models, revenue generation tools, and explore other solutions to common issues facing Jewish media and Jewish communal life.

“The opportunity to grow and improve our digital content operation by learning from some of the best  in the business is beyond exciting,” said Light Editor-in-Chief Ellen Futterman. “We are grateful to the Maimonides Fund for including us in this inaugural Jewish Journalism Fellowship and look forward to using the knowledge we gain during the next year to better inform, inspire, educate and connect the St. Louis Jewish community well into the future.”

Added the Light’s Chief Business and Engagement Officer Betsy Schmidt: “We are at a critical moment in time as far as the future of Jewish news and communications goes. Being able to create a relevant digital format along with new types of content for our next generation is crucial to the sustainability of the Light, and perhaps the St. Louis Jewish community. This fellowship is a huge gift towards stewarding us into the next phase of the Light.”

The idea for the Fellowship came out of a desire to stem the tide of closures of local Jewish newspapers during the pandemic, according to Maimonides Fund President Mark Charendoff.

“We recognize the important role that these publications play in keeping their local communities informed and connected, particularly in times of crisis such as during the current pandemic,” said Charendoff. “We hope that this program will help each publication confront its own challenges, in a supportive, peer-driven cohort, while also beginning a conversation on how to move the field of local Jewish journalism forward.”

While maintaining a Jewish communal focus, the fellowship will draw from cutting-edge work being done in the field of mainstream local journalism and audience development, employing the programming model known as Table Stakes, which has been used by more than 100 local newsrooms across the United States and Europe to advance their work and impact. (The term “table stakes” comes from poker and refers to the seven things a media organization needs to do in order to be in the game of digital news. The program was originally developed by the Knight Foundation, which provides grants in journalism, communities, and the arts.)

Maimonides Fund has brought in change management expert and Table Stakes co-founder Douglas K. Smith to facilitate this aspect of the program, in collaboration with Blue Engine Collaborative, a consortium of consultants and advisers with deep experience in supporting news organizations’ efforts toward digital transformation and long-term sustainability.

The Blue Engine team includes its founder and CEO, Tim Griggs, a former strategy and product executive at The New York Times and former publisher of The Texas Tribune; Ryan Tuck, a former editor at Bloomberg and journalist, audience development and product lead at McClatchy, EducationNC, and elsewhere; and Joanne Heyman, an experienced executive coach and strategic advisor.

The Jewish Journalism Fellowship will infuse the Table Stakes format with programming specific to the concerns of local Jewish media professionals and the Jewish community. Staff from participating publications will learn from and with Jewish educators, journalists and thought leaders, and communal professionals, with the twin goals of further enriching the content they deliver to their readers, and exploring solutions to common challenges facing Jewish media and Jewish communal life.

This aspect of the program is being facilitated by Maimonides Fund staff, in consultation with journalist and researcher Alan D. Abbey, who has a long-term interest and track record in advancing the fields of Jewish and digital media. Currently a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Abbey founded Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth’s English language website, Ynetnews.com, and authored the study “Reporting Jewish: Do Journalists Have the Tools to Succeed?”

Sessions for the fellowship will take place via Zoom, with the possibility of in-person convenings toward the end of the year, depending on the state of the COVID-19 pandemic.