Jmore, the media company covering news in and about Greater Baltimore’s Jewish community, is forming a non-profit and expanding its focus to educate students pursuing Jewish journalism. The multi-platform outlet aims to appeal to Jews across all religious and cultural perspectives, ages, genders, and socioeconomic strata. The new organization will be led by Jmore founder Dr. Scott Rifkin as well as Marc Terrill, former CEO and president of The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore.Rifkin founded JMore in 2016 and it has grown into an organization covering news, milestones, events, cultural trends, sports, features, profiles, and anything else of significance to the Baltimore Jewish community. As Rifkin’s thoughts now turn to longevity and permanence for multi-faceted and discerning representation of Jewish Baltimore, he decided non-profit status was the way to achieve those goals.The new non-profit will center many things, but primarily focus on the ongoing need and availability of Jewish journalism for the Baltimore market. That market doesn’t have as much of a Jewish voice as it used to from a media perspective, especially Jewish journalism based in Baltimore, not controlled completely out of market.Rifkin began working with Terrill, who spent 21 years as CEO and president of The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore, a group of agencies helping those in need. Terrill is one of the most prominent fundraisers and voices for the Jewish community nationwide. After stepping down last June, he’s been working as an executive coach and consultant.Terrill has been interested in Jmore since its inception, as a reader, as leader of a large Jewish institution in Baltimore, and as someone with similar areas of interest. Around six months after Terrill stepped down from The Associated, Rifkin hired him for a long-term consultancy, and to work with Jmore from an editorial perspective.He began a podcast on the Jmore platform, Marc My Word, and in addition to helping Jmore become a viable non-profit, he will be instrumental in supporting the development of Jewish journalism.“It kind of was serendipity,” Terrill told Baltimore Fishbowl. “I care about the idea of Jmore. I think that there are incredible quality individuals that are connected to it. And when I was extended the invitation, I thought, ‘You know what? This is something that I believe in.’”“I think any Jewish community anywhere in the world needs an independent, creative, mission-driven entity that will help to push out ideas, cover happenings in the community, be a forum for debate and conversation,” Terrill said.He believes Jmore’s deepening commitment to nurturing journalism with young adults, specifically Jewish communal journalism, is what sets the organization apart. They are interested in partnering with all institutions wishing to partner with them: synagogues, public schools, private schools, universities, what Terrill calls “the full mosaic of the Baltimore Jewish Community.”As for his own professional reach, a podcast made perfect sense. With what he called a “rolodex” so wide and expansive, laughing at the anachronism, he feels he can engage in conversations with so many people doing relevant and impressive work in myriad spheres of Jewish life and make them available to the community.Marc Terrill and Noam Weissman of OpenDor Media. Photo from JMore Facebook page.His first episode of Marc My Word was a conversation with someone who is on the front lines working with college students and all that is happening on university campuses. The second episode focused on a non-profit organization that develops videos to orient young adults towards issues that affect the Jewish world. The third episode has not dropped yet, but it is a discussion with a long-time friend of Terrill’s who is a Yemeni Muslim man named Mohammed Al Samawi.“He’s been in the States for maybe 10 years,” Terrill said. “He grew up thinking that — it was what he was taught — the Jews were the devil and for evil people, and his mission was, he says it on the podcast, his idea was that Jews were to be killed.”After traveling, meeting different people, including Jewish people, Al Samawi began learning that what he was taught didn’t add up to what he was experiencing. As a result of his peacekeeping efforts, Yemeni extremists put him on a hit list.“A group of people, Jews and people who are not Jewish, kind of engineered his rescue by the Indian Navy to get out of Yemen,” Terrill said. “He got to the States. People bought him clothing. They got him situated…. He runs an organization called the Abrahamic House in DC, where they have Jewish people, Bahai, Christian, Muslim all living together and doing programming in order to demonstrate that people can live together.”Al Samawi’s experiences escaping Yemen are detailed in his memoir, “The Fox Hunt,” and the book is now being made into a movie produced by Baltimore native Mark Platt.Terrill says he’s happy to be connected to people and places like Jmore who are focused on developing a feeder system for independent, dynamic journalism for coverage and engagement of and in Baltimore’s Jewish community.“They’re approaching this in a serious way,” Terrill said of Jmore. “There’s going to be the hope, the goal to have this natural pipeline where when different roles come up for (journalism) positions, whether it be in the field or management, there’s a natural talent pool to pull, already developed, ready to go.”