Home

October 10, 2008

I am pleased to announce that Ron Ostroff, the founding editor and publisher of The Jewish State, will rejoin the newspaper in late October.

Ostroff has spent the last two years as a sales executive with a daily newspaper outside of Philadelphia, and will be-come the director of operations for The Jewish State. In this capacity, he will lead our efforts in sales, distribution, and expansion.

Ostroff started this paper and ran it for almost a decade. He has an intimate knowledge of the paper and the communities it serves.

Ostroff founded The Jewish State in June 1996 and published the first issue on Aug. 30, 1996. The company was sold to an out-of-state entity on Sept. 30, 2005 and was closed by the buyer in May 2006. Soon after, Eliyahu Publications resurrected the paper and we have been publishing it since.

Ostroff had moved to the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill as a sales executive. There, in a little more than two years, he managed to achieve virtually every sales award: salesman of the quarter five times, salesman of the year for 2007, and employee of the year for 2007. He won two New Jersey Press Association awards for advertising design, an achievement award for sales, and first place in the newspaper’s Bright Ideas Contest for the best idea to improve the newspaper and its operation.

Brought up in Linden, Ostroff received his bachelor’s degree in political science and journalism with an emphasis in English from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He also earned a law degree from George Washington’s National Law Center. Licensed to practice law in New Jersey and the District of Columbia, he practiced law briefly with a small law firm.

Ostroff was one of the first reporters for The National Law Journal, a weekly newspaper for the legal profession. He then served as legal affairs writer for the Kansas City Times, U.S. Supreme Court reporter for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a business writer for the Los Angeles Daily News, and was the editorial coordinator for the Baltimore Jewish Times, the Detroit Jewish News, and the Atlanta Jewish Times.

He was founding editor of the weekly New Jersey newspaper and metro editor for the Star-Gazette, a daily newspaper in Elmira, N.Y. He was also a law columnist for New Jersey Success magazine for many years. His writing has appeared in more than 100 newspapers across the country.

Ostroff, 54, lives in Edison.

He recently told me that "Creating The Jewish State was an amazing journey, but getting a chance to return to an even stronger, larger newspaper is an exciting opportunity." I imagine that not having to commute for about an hour in each direction will also be a plus for him.

Ron will be a huge asset to the paper and a very positive force in the Jewish community, and I am extremely pleased to have him join us.