Baltimore Jewish Times

A key creditor in the bankruptcy of the Baltimore Jewish Times and Style Magazine publisher has become the third bidder for the firm, raising the prospect of new ownership that the current chief executive officer said would be "a real tragic end to this company. " H.G. Roebuck & Son Inc., the company's former printer, submitted its initial bid of $450,000 hours before the 5 p.m. deadline on Thursday, said Zvi Guttman, the trustee appointed this month by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to sell the assets of Alter Communications Inc. Starting bids of $440,000 were entered earlier by Route 95 Publications LLC, run by the same group that publishes Washington Jewish Week; and Baltimore Community Publishing LLC, an investor group led by Scott Rifkin, an Owings Mills physician and health care entrepreneur.

Two major advertisers in the Baltimore Jewish Times told a bankruptcy court Wednesday that they might not continue to buy space in the weekly newspaper if its ownership changes. Judge James Schneider weighed their testimony in bankruptcy proceedings against Baltimore-based Alter Communications, which publishes the nearly 100-year-old Jewish Times as well as other magazines. Alter Communications CEO Andrew Alter Buerger, who is editor and publisher of the Jewish Times, has said he would not participate in the joint ownership plan proposed by its former printer.

Baltimore magazine unveils new designA report on Maryland racing rides the September cover of Baltimore as the venerable city magazine's new format gets out of the gate this week.The magazine, founded in 1907, was sold in May to ESS Ventures, a group headed by Susan Souders Obrecht, whose resume includes a stint as owner of the Towson Times, the Owings Mills Times, the Baltimore Messenger and the Jeffersonian.The revamped magazine is sporting a new logo and a stable of new editors and writers, led by Editor Jonathan Witty.

GILBERT SANDLER'S mind is our municipal attic. He holds on to the details everybody else misplaces. Remember that city councilman from South Baltimore after the war? How could Sandler forget? Remember that backup second baseman with the old International League Orioles? Sandler does. Remember the little stretch between Garrison Junior High and Forest Park Senior High? It's all there in the recesses of Sandler's psyche. He remembers trolley car rides during the first D'Alesandro administration, extra-inning stickball games from 1936, counselors' names from Camp Airy, carriage rides through Druid Hill Park.

Joseph Weinstein, Jewish activist, broker, dies at 89Joseph Weinstein, a real estate agent who had been a columnist for the Baltimore Jewish Times and active in Jewish causes, died Sunday of pneumonia at Sinai Hospital. He was 89.Services were held yesterday at Sol Levinson & Brothers.Mr. Weinstein was born in what is now the Soviet Union. He emigrated to the United States as a teen-ager, arriving in Baltimore in 1920.He attended City College and graduated from the University of Baltimore with a degree in business administration.

His opinions can bring strong reactions -- pro and con -- as in his recent column criticizing synagogue services and awards banquets as "dull, predictable and unimaginative." For two decades, few people in Baltimore have commented as often or as knowledgeably about Jews for Jews as Gary Rosenblatt.Since 1974 he's been the editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times, an award-winning weekly with a circulation of 19,000, and is executive editor of its sister papers in Atlanta and Detroit. Next month, he leaves Baltimore to become editor and publisher of the Jewish Week of New York, with a circulation of 110,000.

The Catholic Review, which has chronicled Catholic life in Baltimore in its weekly publication for nearly two centuries, has cut back to biweekly issues. The decision came after months of strategic planning and improvements to the publication's Web pages and social media sites, said Chris Gunty, its editor and associate publisher. The change is a move to preserve the paper and tailor it to the 21st-century reader, he said. "We are not cutting back," he said. "We are enhancing and adding to our content.

A federal judge on Thursday scolded both parties vying for control of the company that publishes the Baltimore Jewish Times, giving them 30 days to develop a plan to take the company out of bankruptcy - or else a trustee would be appointed to run the business. After a three-day hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore, Judge James F. Schneider rejected plans offered by Alter Communications Inc., which runs the Jewish Times and other publications, and by its former printer, H.G. Roebuck & Son, saying neither one was likely to save the weekly magazine.

A trustee will run Alter Communications Inc., publisher of the Baltimore Jewish Times, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge ordered late Friday after determining the company had exhausted all avenues to reorganize under Chapter 11. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Nancy V. Alquist rejected an 11th-hour bid that Alter and its attorneys said could prevent the 93-year-old Jewish Times from folding as soon as next week. Under Alter's proposal, presented in court Friday, Washington Jewish Week publisher WJW Group LLC was prepared to make a formal offer for Alter's assets by Monday and close the deal by Wednesday in time to allow the weekly magazine to publish Friday.

Efforts by Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to win over Jewish voters in Maryland, many of whom have traditionally voted Democratic in the past, may be paying off. Influential members of the Baltimore region's Jewish community say Ehrlich is gaining uncommonly strong support from Jewish Democrats in his bid to become Maryland's first Republican governor since the 1960s. And in Montgomery County, where he is far less known, Jewish voters are beginning to give him a look, leaders there say. Ehrlich says the support reflects that he's a Republican who bothers to ask Jews for their vote - something he learned to do in 1986 in Owings Mills, when he first ran for state delegate with the help of a Jewish campaign chairman.