How you can show your support for the paper and the new editor

When I wrote a column in March and headlined it “The Long Goodbye,” I had no idea how prescient that really was. Honestly, it was supposed to encapsulate my years as a journalist before retiring.

Instead, lots of my friends and co-workers have chuckled as I’ve continued in an interim capacity during a search for a new editor.

I am happy to report that the search has been successful. Jewish Rhode Island will soon have a new editor.

Our new editor is a New England native who has editorial, communications and journalism experience inside and outside the Jewish world. And I think you will find that he has the skills and personality to continue the paper on its trajectory to cover the entire Rhode Island Jewish community and build on the foundation of many previous editors. I couldn’t be more excited to see where Jewish Rhode Island goes from here.

Look for Dan Margolis to introduce himself in the July editor’s note.

I hope you will welcome him to the Rhode Island Jewish community. I’ll be helping him with the July issue and then, hopefully, can begin to experience the retirement I anticipated in April. That long goodbye only took five months.

As we all consider what we would like to see for the future of the newspaper, perhaps consider a gift to the annual Patron Campaign. Fundraising is tough in the current economic climate. Prices for everyday goods and services are rising and so are the costs of putting out a newspaper. Even a digital paper is not without its costs.

A gift to Jewish Rhode Island’s Patron Campaign goes straight to the paper’s operating fund. It is not funneled through any other fundraising campaign. It shows that you support the work of Jewish Rhode Island in communicating local information about the Jewish community to others throughout the state.

We are so fortunate that more than 100 people have donated to the campaign thus far this year. We hope you will join them before our campaign closes at the end of June. You can use the envelope inside the paper or go to jewishrhody.com and click on the donate button at the top of the homepage. Your donation joins a generous grant from the Jewish Federation Foundation and support from our advertisers to bring you the print newspaper and its digital website.

Changing hats from editor back to longtime member of the Jewish community of greater Rhode Island, I can tell you that your gift, no matter its amount, is money well spent on sustaining an important way of connecting the Jewish community – and you with your Jewish friends and neighbors.

Fran Ostendorf

Interim Editor