Bad News for Jewcy and an Update from Zeek

Disappointing news for fans of the online cultural magazine Jewcy: The Fundermentalist reported last week that Jewcy's primary funders have pulled financial support from the magazine. "The staff is now looking for new funders and will continue to sell ads, but will not take a salary for now, nor will it be able to pay its 60-70 contributors."

Once I read about Jewcy's problems, I did wonder about the fate of Zeek, which has partnered with Jewcy for the past year. Here's the text of an e-mail message from Zeek's editor, addressing the issue:

Dear Zeekers,

If you read Jewish newspapers or blogs, you may have heard that the online Jewish magazine, Jewcy, just lost their funding and will have to shut their offices.

For the past year, Zeek has partnered with Jewcy at www.jewcy.com/zeek. This partnership has brought a lot to Zeek—it has quadrupled our number of readers, given us multimedia capabilities, and brought us much more attention from the mainstream Jewish world. The staff of Jewcy particularly have been great partners: I’d like to single out Tahl Rahz, Jewcy’s founding editor; Craig Leinoff, Jewcy’s techincal guru; and Tara Rice, Jewcy’s art director, as true menschen.

The staff of Jewcy plans to continue to maintain the Jewcy site, and you will find Zeek there for at least the next month. We are currently looking at partnering with other Jewish media or at returning to a redesigned Zeek site. We will let you know as soon as we make a decision. To be honest, one aspect of our decision is funding—to maintain our own Zeek site, we would need to locate at least $10,000 in funding per year. If you or someone you know would be interested in making that kind of tax-free donation, please contact me.

In the meantime, please keep your browser tuned to www.zeek.net. It will automatically take you to wherever Zeek lives online. Visit soon. In the next two weeks we will feature a new short story by Riad Baidas, a revised Freedom Seder from Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a piece on affordable housing from David Gottlieb, an autobiographical essay from Jay Michaelson, poems by Maya Bejerano and Courney Druz, and of course, Angela Himsel’s Wednesday column, Angetevka.

Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Editor, Zeek magazine
Executive Director, Zeek Media, Inc.

P.S. We are searching for a few angels to help us transition our website. If you can help, please email me at joellen(at)zeek(dot)net

Stay tuned.