Founder Ned Berke

It is with great excitement that I announce Sheepshead Bites and Bensonhurst Bean have been acquired by Corner Media, a fellow independent publisher of community news.

This is terrific news for our readers and business partners, as it gives us access to a greater network of resources. This deal enables us to provide deeper and broader coverage of our communities, experiment more with our reporting and technology, and offer our business partners greater reach. As associate publisher and senior editor, I will be working with Corner Media Publisher Liena Zagare and Managing Editor Mary Bakija to increase coverage of civic importance throughout the network and to develop new ways to pay for that coverage.

Corner Media’s team has been in this game just a tad longer than I have. With roots dating back to 2007, Liena & Co. operate the highly engaging Ditmas Park Corner, Park Slope Stoop, Fort Greene Focus, KensingtonBK and South Slope News.

Liena and I have been friends for years, and after putting our heads together over the past few months we came to believe it was a natural, necessary and exciting evolution of both of our networks. Having launched community news sites at similar times, and with like-minded focuses on our neighbors and businesses, we’ve long been an influence on one another. Liena and I share deep commitments to our communities and a passion for nurturing and supporting our mom-and-pop establishments, and it simply made sense to pursue these goals together.

I began this journey into community news publishing more than six years ago. It has, without a doubt, been the most rewarding experience of my life, in which I’ve been able to give back to the community where I was born and raised. I’ve made many friends from our ever-growing pool of readers, sources and business partners, and have been humbled to hear from so many of you about how our stories have helped you, sometimes in the most trying hours. I thank you for that. Many of you have made Sheepshead Bites and Bensonhurst Bean a part of your daily lives, and I am eternally grateful for your support thus far.

It is with that in mind that I embark on this new leg of that journey. There have been other potential suitors over the years that I have turned down, and I did so because I felt they may not have the same sensitivity for our readers, our vision and our community. But I know that with Liena, Mary and the rest of the Corner Media team, I could not have found better partners with which to share the reins.

You will likely see a number of changes over the coming months. A long overdue (and mobile-friendly) design is in the works. We’re already kicking around ideas for new regular features. We’ll be introducing a number of new local writers on these pages. For our business partners, a host of innovative marketing opportunities across Brooklyn will become available. It’s going to be a great and exciting time in the history of Sheepshead Bites and Bensonhurst Bean, and we’re energized over all the possibilities on the horizon.

I look forward to your continued support, and, as always, welcome hearing from you as we move forward.

Kind regards,

Ned Berke

Founder, Sheepshead Bites and Bensonhurst Bean

P.S. – For those interested in keeping tabs on me personally, or about how the sausage is made, follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. In the near future I’ll be posting there about the transition, my personal reflections/rants, and my thoughts on the online news publishing industry.

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Tags: corner news media, ditmas park corner, fort greene focus, kensingtonbk, liena zagare, mary bakija, ned berke, newspapers, park slope stoop, publishing, sheepshead bites llc, Site News, south slope news