Minnesota’s Jewish paper goes biweekly: After nearly a century in business, Minneapolis-based weekly the American Jewish World is switching to a biweekly production schedule. Founded in 1912 as the Jewish Weekly to “tell  the Jewish story and to be a catalyst for Jewish unity and cultural vitality” (it got its current name in 1915), the paper has been hard hit, like many community papers, by the recession. Anticipating a long-term downturn in advertising, publisher and editor Mordecai Specktor — only the fifth person to hold that position in the paper’s history — writes that the new schedule begins May 1. “The plan is to publish on a biweekly basis and deliver a more substantial newspaper to our loyal subscribers,” he told me in an email. He says he’d like to improve the paper’s website, but first he’s getting ready to announce publication of the annual AJW Community Guide, a directory of Jewish business and services, which will be published on the site and, in November, in print.  (A bit of trivia: Someone well-versed in the struggle to make media sustainable is involved with the publication: MinnPost founder Joel Kramer is Specktor’s partner and a board member on the paper’s parent organization, Minnesota Jewish Media, LLC.)

N.D. journalist sentenced in Iran: Journalist Roxana Saberi, a North Dakota native, was sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage by Iranian authorities. The 31-year-old, who was born to an Iranian father and Japanese mother in Fargo, has lived in Iran for six years, where she’s done reporting for National Public Radio and the BBC, among other outlets. Saberi’s father says that Roxana testified that her “earlier confessions were not true and she told me she had been tricked into believing that she would be released if she cooperated.” With pressure from the Obama administration, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has urged the top prosecutor in Tehran to review the case.

Happy B-day, TCDP: The Twin Cities Daily Planet is turning three and celebrating at a community happy hour, May 1 at Bedlam Theatre.