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.

Strib HQ Photo: Paul Schmelzer

Strib Teamsters again reject concessions: The Teamsters press operators union at the Star Tribune has for the second time rejected contract concessions that would’ve cut their wages by 16 percent over the life of the agreement. Last month the union voted down a similar deal. At that time, two other Teamster locals at the Strib voted for the concessions, but due to an agreement struck between the three groups, a no-vote by any single local would kill the agreement for all. In an interesting twist, the Teamsters Joint Council is claiming they approved no such thing and that the contracts for Teamster drivers and mailers will stand. The pressmen’s givebacks would’ve meant the cutting of 60 of the 340 shifts per week, pay cuts of 10 percent for members and changes to overtime provisions, among others.

Funeraltweeting? Our sister site, the Colorado Independent, is outraged that The Rocky Mountain News used the microblogging tool Twitter to liveblog the funeral of a three-year old. My take: the form of Twitter itself — a 140-character limit, which often leads to abbreviated words — is too informal for such an affair. Plus, RMN didn’t bother to capitalize or punctuate its tweets, adding to the feeling that it was a glib endeavor.

Kersten’s idea of a “storm”: Conservative Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten is again tilting her rightward-bent lance at the majority-Muslim charter school TIZA, writing that a “storm is brewing” between the school and the Department of Education over the state’s concern about the school’s voluntary Friday prayer time. But David Brauer of MinnPost provides critical context that Kersten omitted, a letter a TIZA administrator sent to the state. While Kersten calls the note “defensive,” Brauer says “the letter patiently and respectfully makes it case, then offers to make the changes anyway.” He concludes that the paper has “occasionally provided supporting documentation for past Kersten columns, but it really needs to make that a habit when TIZA is involved.”

The Pulitzer Prize of YouTube: YouTube and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting are teaming up to award $10,000 to a videomaker covering under-reported stories of global importance. Begun Sept. 8, the contest will give its winner funds for travel, production aid from the Pulitzer Center, high-end equipment and distribution on YouTube.