By Jim Knippenberg
Enquirer staff writer

Northern Kentucky's new Sunday Challenger (www.challengernky.com) is about to hit the streets. Look for the debut edition July 4, says editor Tom Mitsoff.

The first edition of the free paper will be 32 pages - "but it will grow," he says - and cover Kenton, Campbell and Boone counties, serving up the usual "general interest" mix - news, features, opinion, comics, investigative pieces, entertainment.

Mitsoff plans to distribute 60,000 issues via street racks, stores, restaurants and free home delivery (phone number pending).

It will be produced by a full-time news staff of 10, the majority of them locals who already know the market. The staff is backed up by a corps of freelancers and a lineup of guest columnists doing mostly opinion pieces.

Old friends

Former Channel 9 reporter and fill-in anchor Shawn Ley has been at WDIV-TV, Detroit's NBC affiliate and the city's No. 1 station, since April.

Ley, a Dayton native, was at TV 9 from 2000 to 2004 and could have stayed in town - TV 9 made an offer and a few other local stations were interested. Instead, he "researched where the greatest challenge in news would be and that was WDIV-TV."

He's not kidding about "challenge." "My work load tripled. I produce three stories a day and present them live at noon, 5 and 6 p.m. - 10 to 12 hour work days are the norm."

He misses Cincinnati: "I loved reporting and living in Cincinnati. The city and area truly are the jewels of our country. What's funny is, so many people in Cincinnati, don't know how wonderful the city is. Perhaps I'll be back."

Local success story

Joshua LeBar received some good news recently. The 1995 LaSalle High School grad, who has been living in Los Angeles for the past four years, landed a recurring role in Entourage, a new 30-minute comedy on HBO.

"It's sort of a male version of Sex and the City set in L.A. with Mark Wahlberg as executive producer. It's about a successful L.A. star and how his friends use him for everything - to get into clubs, land parts, that sort of thing."

"My character is Josh Wine-stein, a Hollywood agent. So you know I'll be kind of shady and a little bit greasy."

The show premieres July 18, but LeBar doesn't show up until episodes four, five and six.

Big winner

Cincinnati Magazine won four awards at the 19th annual City and Regional Magazine Association's yearly conference.

The biggie was its silver medal in the General Excellence category for magazines with less than 30,000 circulation. This was the last year the book will be judged in the 30,000 or less division because its circulation has grown.

Cincinnati also won gold in the Leisure/Lifestyle category for its February, 2003, edition titled Sex in the City. The Sept. 3 profile of Jerry Springer ("What the (bleep) was Jerry Thinking?") took silver in the Personality Profile category. The June, 2003, edition took bronze in the Excellence in Writing category.

E-mail jknippenberg@enquirer.com