Former Virginia Business Magazine Publisher Goes Online with E-mail Newsletter.

By McGregor McCance, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Jun. 22--The former publisher of Virginia Business magazine this month bought part of a startup e-mail newsletter focusing on the state's technology and venture capital industries.

Terms were not disclosed.

Jim Bacon plans to expand the reach and content of the "VA Newswire," a collection of corporate press releases, tech news, events and job postings e-mailed weekly to about 7,000 people.

Former Richmond entrepreneur Sparrow Mahoney started the e-mail service last November. She compiled content while co-owner 303 Media, a Richmond startup, handled delivery and compiled readership statistics.

Mahoney recently moved her primary business, VentureLanes, to Northern Virginia to be closer to a more active venture investing community than Richmond.

Relying on advertising sales, the VA Newswire has a projected revenue specified only as "five figures annually."

Bacon sees the news wire as an accompaniment to his plans to start an Internet-only opinion publication, "Bacon's Rebellion," this summer.

Bacon expects Northern Virginia developments to form the bulk of newswire content. And information included in the e-mails will continue to focus on short summaries. "People are really busy," Bacon said. "Rarely are they going to want to read more than two paragraphs."