Frankenstein had been considering canceling his subscription for several months, and said a full-page paid ad urging Jews to drop the paper running in last week's Bulletin pushed him over the top.

"That…ad put me over. I responded to that and said I've got to do it. Several times I'd read editorials in The Wall Street Journal and the Chronicle on the same issue. It was like reading night and day. It was so incredible. It was so incredibly different."

Frankenstein said he plans to send Ross a packet of articles touching on pro-Israel subjects he feels the Chronicle has failed to cover.

Ross said readers do not have to cancel subscriptions to get his attention, however.

A four-page Middle East pullout appearing in the Chronicle last week was the idea of a reader who made a call to Ross.

Still, Frankenstein isn't concerned with what the Chronicle has done in the past. He wants to see how the paper handles Mideast coverage in the future.

"Talking with Ross, the irony of it was he said I shouldn't cancel and we shouldn't boycott," said Frankenstein, a board member of American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; and the Bulletin.

"But if I hadn't canceled, we wouldn't have been speaking. Just the fact that I opened the door, and he was big enough to listen to me, I'm glad I did it."

— Joe Eskenazi