The Jewish Chronicle
The Jewish Chronicle is a London-based Jewish weekly newspaper. Founded in 1841, it is the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world. Its editor is Daniel Schwammenthal.
The newspaper is published every Friday except on Jewish holidays, providing news, opinion pieces, social, cultural and sports reports, as well as editorials and readers' letters.
The average weekly circulation in 2024 was 10,082, of which 4,442 were free copies, down from 32,875 in 2008. In February 2020, it announced plans to merge with the Jewish News but, in April 2020, entered voluntary liquidation and was acquired from the liquidators by a private consortium of political insiders, broadcasters and bankers. The paper's political stance under editor Jake Wallis Simons subsequently moved to the right.
In 2024, The Guardian reported that some of the newspaper's prominent journalists had quit the newspaper due to its purportedly unknown ownership arrangements and publication of fabricated stories.
History
19th century
The Jewish Chronicle first appeared on 12 November 1841. Its first editors were David Meldola and Moses Angel. It was issued as a weekly until May 1842, when it was suspended. From October 1844, it resumed as a fortnightly, with Joseph Mitchell as its editor. In 1847, it became again a weekly newspaper. A. Benisch, who became the proprietor and editor in 1855, bequeathed the paper to the Anglo-Jewish Association in 1878, who sold it to its new editor and anti-Zionist Asher I. Myers, Sydney M. Samuel and Israel David.In 1881, the leaders of the Jewish community in London were being criticised for not campaigning against the pogroms that were taking place in the Russian Empire. Under the leadership of Francis Henry Goldsmid, the pogroms were not mentioned by the newspaper and it was only after the feminist Louisa Goldsmid gave her support following calls to arms by an anonymous writer named "Juriscontalus" and Asher Myers of The Jewish Chronicle that action was taken. Public meetings were then held across the country and Jewish and Christian leaders in Britain spoke out against the atrocities.
20th century
In December 1906, L.J. Greenberg, a successful advertising agent and English Zionist leader, contacted the Dutch banker Jacobus Kann with the object of buying The Jewish Chronicle to promote Zionism. The same month, Greenberg, together with David Wolffsohn, Joseph Cowen, Jacobus H. Kahn, and Leopold Kessler, bought the shares. Greenberg himself became its editor.At the time, The Jewish Chronicle gained a near monopoly in the Jewish press, taking over its principal competitors, The Hebrew Observer and The Jewish World. Only in October 1919 did The JC get a strong opposing voice from The Jewish Guardian, the paper of the League of British Jews, which counterbalanced the Zionist views of The JC, until it disappeared in 1931. After Greenberg died the same year, The JC remained moderately pro-Zionist under the leadership of Leopold Kessler.
The weekly newspaper The Jewish World was taken over in 1913. It published articles by various Zionist leaders, as well as early non-Jewish pro-Zionists. In 1934, it was merged with The Jewish Chronicle. After 1948, the paper maintained a pro-Israel attitude.
In the late 1930s, David F. Kessler became managing director to assist his chairman father Leopold Kessler, a moderate Zionist and an associate of Theodor Herzl, known as the father of the State of Israel. After service as a soldier in World War II during which his father had died, Kessler found that the editor, Ivan Greenberg, had taken a right-wing Zionist position highly critical of moderate Zionists and the British policy in Palestine. Kessler, after a struggle with the newspaper's board, sacked Greenberg and installed a moderate editor.
By the early 1960s, the Kessler family owned 80% of the newspaper's shares. To safeguard the newspaper's future, Kessler created a foundation ownership structure loosely modelled on the Scott Trust, owners of The Guardian. Kessler was chairman for nearly 30 years, until his death in 1999.
Joseph Finklestone wrote for the paper from 1946 to 1992 in roles including sports editor, chief sub-editor, home news editor, assistant editor, foreign editor, and diplomatic editor.
Geoffrey Paul was editor between 1977 and 1990.
21st century
Editors of The Jewish Chronicle have included Ned Temko, 1990 to 2005, Jeff Barak, who returned to Israel, and David Rowan, 2006 to 2008, who joined The Observer. Stephen Pollard became editor in November 2008 and editor-at-large in December 2021. He was succeeded as editor by Jake Wallis Simons.In 2018, the newspaper made a loss of about £1.1 million, following a loss of £460,000 in the previous year. After a number of years of declining circulation and a pension deficit, the reserves of its owners since 1984, the charity The Kessler Foundation, had been exhausted and they planned to introduce revenue and cost measures to reduce losses. According to the editor, the paper had been facing the "real threat" of having to close and the Press Gazette reported its situation as "facing a grave closure threat". Jonathan Goldstein, chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council, organised a consortium of 20 individuals, families and charitable trusts to make donations to The Kessler Foundation to enable its continued support of the newspaper. Alan Jacobs, founder of Jacobs Capital, became the new chairman.
In February 2020, The Jewish Chronicle and Jewish News announced plans to merge, subject to raising the necessary finance to support the merger. Combined, they printed more than 40,000 copies weekly.
On 8 April 2020, The Jewish Chronicle went into liquidation, and both papers announced their intentions to close, due to the COVID lockdown. In April 2020, when the Chronicle faced closure due to financial problems during the Covid pandemic, threats to the paper's survival were met by sadness and some jubilation, with journalists Jonathan Freedland and Hadley Freeman expressing sorrow, and some Labour supporters welcoming its demise.
The Kessler Trust launched a bid to buy the two papers, giving editorial control to the senior staff of the News. However, a £2.5 million counter-offer, supported by the editor, was accepted by the liquidators and trust in what The Guardian described as a brief but messy takeover bid. The consortium was led by Robbie Gibb and included John Woodcock, broadcasters Jonathan Sacerdoti and John Ware and Jonathan Kandel, former Charity Commission chairman William Shawcross, Rabbi Jonathan Hughes, Investec's corporate and institutional banking chief operating officer Robert Swerling, managing partner at EMK Capital Mark Joseph, and Tom Boltman, head of strategic initiatives at Kovrr, with support from anonymous philanthropists.
The consortium said it was running the paper as a community asset, not for profit, and that it would set up a trust to ensure its editorial independence. The News was then taken out of liquidation. However, the identity of other backers in the consortium was unknown, which is highly unusual for a significant UK newspaper. Ware told The Times in September 2024, "I, and some others, repeatedly asked to be told who the new funders were. We were told that wouldn't be possible. I was assured that they were politically mainstream and I trusted those assurances because I trusted who gave them. I didn't want the paper to fold so I allowed my name to be used, having been told it would help. I had zero managerial, financial or editorial influence, control or input, nor ever have had. It was just a name." Due to concerns over the publication's new editorial line under Wallis Simons, Ware stopped writing for The Jewish Chronicle in February 2024, defecting to the Jewish News. Former Chronicle journalist Lee Harpin said in September 2024 that after the takeover he was told the new owners wanted more views "well to the right of the Tory party".
Some sources suggested that the funding may have come from a right-wing American billionaire, Paul Singer, known as a "longtime supporter of hawkish pro-Israel causes", the Likud party, and Benjamin Netanyahu. However, Singer's hedge-fund company has denied the claim. There were also concerns about the potential conflict of interest for Gibb, who sat on the BBC's editorial standards committee while the JC editor had been critical of the BBC's coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict.
On 15 March 2024, The Jewish Chronicle announced ownership of the paper would transfer to a newly created charitable trust. In September 2024, its editor told The Guardian the ownership transfer had taken place in July 2024, but The Guardian could find no evidence of the transfer in Companies House records, and the Charity Commission said that it had no record of an application from The Jewish Chronicle. However Jonathan Kandel, a former tax lawyer apparently now associated with investment company Starwood Capital Group, was listed at Companies House as a person with significant control, replacing Jonathan Kandel, and a director of Jewish Chronicle Media.
Elon Perry controversy
In September 2024, The Jewish Chronicle removed several articles from its website that had been criticised by Israeli media as fabrications. The nine reports were written by Elon Perry, a freelancer with no apparent track record as a journalist who had provided a questionable résumé. It was later found out that Elon Perry's real name was Eli Yifrach. One of his articles claimed Israel had intelligence that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning to smuggle Israeli hostages to Iran and accompany them there. This echoed a talking point previously raised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and was seen by commentators in Israel as an attempt to drum up support for Netanyahu's unpopular stance in hostage negotiations at the time. IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said he was unaware of any intelligence about Sinwar intending to flee to Iran with hostages. A similarly fabricated story about Hamas hostages had earlier been published by German tabloid Bild, which led Israeli security service Shin Bet to launch an investigation and arrest Netanyahu's spokesman, Eli Feldstein.On 15 September 2024, four prominent long-time columnists, David Aaronovitch, David Baddiel, Jonathan Freedland and Hadley Freeman, resigned from the newspaper due to their view that it was making political rather than journalistic judgements, and because of the recent fabricated stories. Sunday Times journalist Josh Glancy had resigned with similar concerns in 2023.
On 18 September 2024, a Haaretz opinion piece by Etan Nechin stated the view that The JC had "increasingly abandoned journalistic integrity in order to champion causes widely associated with the Israeli right" and was "predisposed to deception".