By The Talon Staff
Photo provided by Menifee 24/7
Doug Spoon (left) interviewing City Council member Lesa Sobek (right). Photo provided by Doug Spoon.
The Talon is thankful to have many great supporters working with us, including our adviser and editor Doug Spoon, who runs the Menifee 24/7 and Murrieta 24/7 news websites with his wife Kristen.
Menifee 24/7 was launched on Nov. 1, 2004 by Menifee resident Steve Johnson, an internet entrepreneur and computer programmer. He created Menifee 24/7 as a site to report and promote local news he felt wasn’t being covered by regional daily newspapers. As interest in the website grew, Johnson added a Menifee 24/7 Facebook page in 2010.
In 2013, Johnson sold Menifee 24/7 to Spoon, who was already a veteran journalist at the time, and sales manager Shelli Stovall. Today Spoon runs the site with his wife Kristen and a small staff of freelancers. Since the Spoon’s took over Menifee 24/7, its Facebook followers have increased from 6,000 to 41,000. The website averages 40,000 unique users and half a million page views per month.
Menifee 24/7 has been Spoon’s “semi-retirement” project after a 35-year career as a newspaper sports writer and editor and a 12-year tenure as a journalism instructor at Cal Poly Pomona. As a sports journalist, Doug covered the 1984 Summer Olympics and multiple events including the World Series, Super Bowl and NBA Finals. He was a beat writer for the Dodgers in the 1980s and USC football and basketball in the 1990s. He served as advisor for the Cal Poly student newspaper from 2004-15.
Since 2015, he has served as advisor to MSJC’s student-run newspaper, The Talon. He has a great interest in genealogy and has written a book about the history of the Spoon family.
Menifee 24/7 and Murrieta 24/7 report on local news stories. You can see their stories on their websites: menifee247.com and murrieta247.com.