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The Forward to become Zeek magazine’s Web host

By Jacob Berkman · June 26, 2009

The Forward will become the Web host for Zeek magazine, according to mediabistro.

Zeek, which had been hosted by Jewcy.com until it lost its funders this winter, had been seeking another partner and apparently found one in the Forward.

The two entities will remain editorially independent, the Forward’s editor, Jane Eisner, told mediabistro's Fishbowlny:

Under the terms of the agreement, the Forward will host Zeek on its site, but both publications will remain independent.

"Zeek will have a channel or microsite on our site," Eisner explained. "They will control all of the content and keep up their relationships with all their writers. We will at times try to collaborate if we think there are things that will be interesting to our readers, but we're going to try not to obviously overlap our content. We're also trying to do some programming with them in New York and around the country in the fall, I hope."

As far as Eisner is concerned, pairing with Zeek was win-win for the Forward. The paper, which focuses mostly on complex, investigative stories that affect the Jewish community, was looking to attract a younger audience and expand its reach.

"The reason that Zeek made so much sense for us is because we have been developing this idea of becoming a portal for the Jewish community," Eisner said. "Until very recently most of the content on our site was generated by the Forward. We really want to move forward into a time when we can be partnering with like-minded enterprises, like Zeek and host their content or share content on our site as well. Readers will know they are getting quality content and we will be providing a service to the community."