Robert Maxwell, the international newspaper tycoon, launched a new Russian-language weekly Thursday in Israel, designed for the country’s most rapidly growing market — Soviet Jewish immigrants.
Called Vremya (Time), it is affiliated with Ma’ariv, Israel’s second-largest daily, in which Maxwell bought a 50 percent interest last year.
Vremya, which will also be available in the Soviet Union, is staffed mainly by Soviet immigrants. Its name is the same as that of the most popular Soviet television news program.
Vremya faces stiff competition for readers who are for the most part of a different generation of Soviet Jews.
There is a host of Russian weeklies and periodicals and one Russian-language daily newspaper in Israel, Nashastrana (Our Country), which is affiliated with the Labor Party’s foreign-language publishing house.
Ma’ariv’s archrival, the afternoon tabloid Yediot Achronot, announced that its own Russian-language newspaper will appear Friday, the day the first edition of Vremya hits the newsstands.
The rapidly growing Russian-language press spells circulation wars at which Maxwell seems adept. The Czechoslovak-born Jew just purchased the Daily News, a 75-year-old New York tabloid whose owners were about to shut it down after a bitter five-month strike.
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