BJ's Evans, Leach plan web site

From Crain's Cleveland Business March 22, 2006


Beacon Journal columnist, former editor plan web site

By JOHN BOOTH
A longtime Akron Beacon Journal columnist, a former Beacon Journal editor and other journalists and investors, spurred by the sale of the paper’s parent company, Knight Ridder, plan to unveil an independent news web site by the end of the year.

Diane Evans, who has been at the paper since 1974, and former editor Jan Leach are among the group behind the as-yet-unnamed project, which Ms. Evans says “is truly a new concept for delivering information over the web.”

It will be privately funded and not affiliated with Ohio.com, the Beacon's web site.

“What we’re really trying to do is combine the old-fashioned journalism with new approaches,” Ms. Evans said Wednesday in a telephone interview with Crain’s Cleveland Business. “So that what we’re delivering is credible, it’s reliable … yet really embracing the full capabilities of the Internet.”

The Beacon Journal’s future has been clouded since Knight Ridder’s decision last fall to sell itself, and since last week’s announcement of its purchase by Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy Co., which plans to sell the Akron paper and 11 other Knight Ridder publications.

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Ms. Evans said while that uncertainty revved up her plans to make the project a reality, it “has never been conceived as a competing thing to the Beacon Journal,” and she hopes to continue working at the paper.

“It has been conceived as a complement to the Beacon’s site from the beginning,” she said. “And not only to the Beacon’s web site, but to other papers’ web sites. We are hoping that McClatchy would talk to us about a future relationship.”

Ms. Leach, a professional-in-residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism, said the project is nationwide in scope and will consist largely of its own generated content, though it will be far more than a traditional news site.

“We are trying to develop a web site that is a web experience,” she said. “It uses journalism as a jumping-off point for content, but it is not news. There will be news, and we will be using reporters and photographers, but also videographers and others.”

Other partners in the project include Ms. Evans’ brother, Joseph Paparone, former director of operations at Knight Ridder’s Macon (Ga.) Telegraph, attorney Debra Sinopoli, and businessman Michael Gallucci. A Knight Ridder executive also is a partner, though Ms. Evans said that person’s name cannot be disclosed.

The project is working closely with Montrose-based Trio Design and Communications.

Ms. Evans said the site is expected to go live by the end of the year, and sample pages are being prepared to share with prospective advertisers.

Financing is in place, Ms. Evans said, though more investors are being courted. She declined to disclose specifics of the financing plan.