Former Forbes.com ME lands at local online news startup

Carl Lavin, the former managing editor of Forbes.com who left this year, has joined a local online news startup in Connecticut.

Lavin has become managing editor of Main Street Connect, a national community news company. Main Street Connect’s mission is empower local entrepreneurs to produce high-quality profitable community news sites and to knit those sites into a national communications network. Here is one of its sites, covering Wilton.

“At Forbes, I developed a keen appreciation for the power of entrepreneurial ideas,” said Lavin in an e-mail. “This is the best time to be bringing that entrepreneurial approach to journalism.”

Main Street Connect is already up on the Web, covering 10 towns in Connecticut in southern Fairfield County. The mission, said Lavin, is to continue improving the quality, range and depth of the  news and information Main Street makes available to its audience  and of the design and functionality of its sites.

Before joining Forbes, Lavin was at the The Philadelphia Inquirer where he was deputy managing editor for online and multimedia. Previously he was responsible for foreign, national, metro, science, health and business news. He joined The Inquirer in 2004, after 20 years at The New York Times, including six years as deputy Washington editor. At The Times, he was also deputy metro editor, graphics editor, and an assistant national editor.