Business Journals Chairman Ray Shaw dies

Ray Shaw, chairman of the Charlotte-based company that owns Charlotte Business Journal and 40 other publications, died this morning from apparent complications from a bee sting. He was 75.

Shaw was working in the garage of his southeast Charlotte home early Saturday when he was stung by a yellow jacket that "very quickly triggered a pretty extensive collapse," his son Whit said today.

He was revived, but died this morning at the hospital, his son said.

Shaw started in the news business when he was in high school as a reporter for his hometown newspaper in El Reno, Okla. Leaving the University of Oklahoma before graduating, he went to work for Associated Press in Oklahoma City, then in Louisville, Ky., and finally New York.

In 1960, he began a 29-year career at Dow Jones & Co, first as a business reporter at the Wall Street Journal and then in several editorial positions, before jumping to the company's business side. In 1989, he took early retirement at 55 as Dow Jones' chairman and chief operating officer.

He and wife Kay, his childhood sweetheart in Oklahoma, moved to Charlotte where their children were living.

He didn't stay retired long, flying to Kansas City, where the American City Business Journals was based, to see if he could buy the Charlotte Business Journal and a few others, Whit Shaw said.

The company's founder suggested he buy all 20, and with a partner Shaw did, moving the company to Charlotte.

Since then, he and his sons, Whit and Kirk, have doubled the number of publications it publishes, including The Sporting News, Street & Smith's SportBusiness Journal, NASCAR Scene and the Hemmings automobile guide. link....