Ray Shaw, ACBJ Chairman, Dies

American City Business Journals chairman Ray Shaw died early Sunday morning from complications following a bee sting. He was 75.

Shaw joined ACBJ in 1989 after taking early retirement as president of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal. In his 20 years as chairman and chief executive of ACBJ, the company moved its headquarters from Kansas City to Charlotte, North Carolina, doubled the number of weekly business journals it publishes, and expanded into magazines and other media. Along the way, employment grew from about 850 people to more than 1,900.

ACBJ publishes 40 local business weeklies, among other properties, and is now part of Advance Publications, the largest privately held media company in the United States. In May, Shaw decided to take over operations of Portfolio.com after Condé Nast Publications, another division of Advance, shut down the business-news site and its corresponding magazine. Portfolio.com is set to relaunch in September.

Shaw was honored recently by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers with its lifetime achievement award. Although much of his career was on the business side of publishing, he remained a journalist at heart.

Shaw took early retirement to move to Charlotte, where he planned to join his sons, Whitney and Kirk, in their small publishing company. He liked to say that he left Dow Jones on a Friday and was flying to Kansas City the following Wednesday to inquire about the possibility of buying two or three business journals that were part of the ACBJ group. ACBJ founder Mike Russell suggested that he buy the entire company instead. Shaw and a partner successfully acquired majority ownership of ACBJ in late 1989.

Shaw was known as a dedicated family man and, in many respects, ran ACBJ as an extension of that family. "There's no question that family was primary to him" said Whitney Shaw, executive vice president of ACBJ. "That's the reason he took early retirement (from Dow Jones) so he could come to Charlotte and be with family, and family was the foundation for the kind of company he wanted to build."

As CEO, Shaw frequently improved the company's employee benefits, started a scholarship program for children of employees, and took other steps to make ACBJ family-friendly. Shaw's work ethic was legendary, but Whitney Shaw noted, "Most weeks, he was (also) on a sideline somewhere cheering for his grandkids," and he wanted his employees to feel they could do the same with their families, he said.

Shaw grew up in El Reno, Oklahoma, where he started his journalism career on the local newspaper. He attended the University of Oklahoma and worked for the Daily Oklahoman newspaper and the Associated Press in Oklahoma City while in school. While at the Wall Street Journal, he was a reporter, page-one editor, and bureau chief. In addition, he was the founding executive in charge of the AP-Dow Jones international newswire. During his tenure at Dow Jones, the Journal became the largest circulation newspaper in the U.S. and started the Asian Wall Street Journal and Wall Street Journal Europe.

Besides more than doubling ACBJ's business titles and employment, Shaw also diversified the company into automotive and sports publishing. Acquisitions included Hemmings Motor News, NASCAR Scene, and Sporting News, among others. He was good at understanding what people were passionate about, Whitney Shaw said, and was able to develop products that catered to those passions.

"Whether it was sports or business or cars, it didn't matter—he was playing to that enthusiast audience," he said.

Whitney Shaw said one of the keys to understanding his father was that he was first and foremost a journalist. "He could (succeed) in advertising and circulation, but he never stopped being a journalist, he was always a reporter and editor first."

Ray Shaw is survived by his wife Kay, sons Whitney and Kirk and their spouses, his daughter Beth and her husband, and seven grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.