April 2, 2012

(JTA) — The owners of Washington’s Jewish newspaper have purchased The Baltimore Jewish Times at a bankruptcy auction.

Route 95 Publications, LLC, an affiliate of the WJW Group, which owns the Washington Jewish Week, announced that it won the Monday auction to purchase Alter Communications, the publisher of The Baltimore Jewish Times.

The sale needs to be approved by the bankruptcy court.

“The Baltimore Jewish Times is, literally, a significant communal institution, and a meaningful player in the world of Anglo-Jewish newspapers,” said Louis Mayberg, a partner of Route 95 Publications. “We respect that tradition, and we are committed to continue it, and to build upon it.”

Alter Communications went into bankruptcy following an acrimonious legal dispute with its printer. The dispute threw the future of the Baltimore Jewish Times, a 93-year-old weekly, into uncertainty.

Route 95 Publications was one of three bidders for Alter Communications. The other two bidders were Baltimore Community Publishing, LLC, which owns a local sports publication, and the printer, H.G. Roebuck & Son, Inc., which had won a legal judgment against Alter over breach of contract that led to the bankruptcy.

Mayberg said in his statement that while his ownership group anticipated “the development of some efficiencies on the administrative side of the paper, our plan is to keep as many employees of the paper who can help make it better and stronger, and to bring in additional support to help the paper continue to grow and prosper.”

He stated that his group is “committed to maintaining the high level of journalistic integrity of the Jewish Times” and to it remaining “a Baltimore-based paper.”

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