San Diego News Network Sets Sights on Riverside

The San Diego News Network, a startup online news service, seems to have found its sea legs after a choppy start.

Backed by a $1 million investment raised by husband and wife team Neil Senturia and Barbara Bry, the outlet reported 418,600 page views, including 154,400 unique visitors over the month.

SDNN.com, which has eight full-time journalists and many more contributing columnists, writers and bloggers, is hiring an editor in southwestern Riverside County to lead a new Web site, SWRNN.com.

In a blog posting on its Web site, SDNN says the new site is the first affiliate of San Diego News Network. The editor will be responsible for covering Temecula and Lake Elsinore including writing stories, posting content, taking photos and videos, hiring free-lance writers, bloggers and columnists, and editing their content.

Bry, who serves as associate publisher and opinion editor, had no comment on whether other full-time staffers would join the new editor.

“We’re starting with hiring the editor,” she said by email.

The organization was featured June 8 in a Forbes article about the rise of online journalism. The same week it hired Chris Jennewein as editor in chief.

Jennewein is the former head of the Union-Tribune’s online arm, SignOnSanDiego.com, and a former colleague of Ron James, the founder and original editor of SDNN.com, who resigned a week after its launch.

— Ned Randolph