Post-KQED, Hellman Non-Profit Venture Plans to Tap Frazier, Weber

(MoneyWatch)  BNET has learned the names of the key executives that the troubled Bay Area News Project plans to announce "later this month," as promised yesterday in a statement released by Neil Henry, Dean of the U-C, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, which is one of the partners in the project.

The CEO of the new venture is to be Lisa Frazier, a partner at McKinsey & Co., the very consultant engaged by the project to find a CEO. The project is funded by Bay Area financier and billionaire Warren Hellman.

Frazier, whose compensation is said to range north of $400,000* for this position, has a background not in media but in chemicals and oil companies, especially Mobil Oil, Australia and USA.

The new editor in chief for the project is to be Jonathan Weber, best known in the Bay Area as the former editor of the high-flying, dot.com-era magazine The Industry Standard.

Weber left San Francisco for Montana in 2002, and has not been active in the Bay Area news scene since that time.

Sources close to the project, while confirming these choices, stressed that both executives were selected prior to the withdrawal of public broadcasting company KQED from the coalition of organizations involved in the local non-profit news venture, adding that it is not yet known whether their appointments may be affected by that development, which was first reported by BNET yesterday.

*If accurate, compare this with KQED's CEO's compensation package.
Related Link:
Non-Profit News Deal between Millionaire Hellman, KQED Falls Apart