Could this rival bid give the Jewish Chronicle a long-term future?

The Jewish Chronicle might be rescued but if it is, it’s not going to be pretty. The world’s oldest Jewish newspaper announced, alongside the Jewish News, that it was going into liquidation on the eve of Passover. A few days later however, the paper’s current owner, the Kessler Foundation, unveiled a bid to take both titles out of liquidation by merging them. Kessler has claimed to be securing the JC’s long-term future before, with evidently limited success, but there seemed to be no alternative. 

Not any longer. A consortium of media, business and political figures has come forward with a rival bid. It claims that it can actually deliver on talk of keeping the newspaper in business for the long term. But this intervention has not been met with open arms and glad tidings by the old guard. Last night, JC chairman Alan Jacobs told the FT the consortium’s bid was ‘a shameful attempt to hijack the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper’.