The Water Education Foundation has hired veteran journalist Douglas E. Beeman as its news & publications director as it prepares to move more of its journalism online, announced Jennifer Bowles, the Foundation’s executive director.

Starting in 2018, the Foundation’s premiere water resources magazine, Western Water, will join the world of online media where it will increase the pace of its coverage and expand its reach via social media. Western Water currently is a quarterly print magazine.

“Western Water has been the go-to source for coverage of water news since 1977,” Bowles said. “With the state of print journalism in decline and reporters on the water beat leaving the industry, we have the ability to extend our reporting on a critical resource to a wider audience by going online. It also will make our reporting more accessible and allow readers to easily search for information.”

Bowles said the Foundation will be communicating with current subscribers and contributors who receive the print edition so they know how to access the new online version.

Beeman comes to the Foundation after 11 years as an assistant metro editor for The Fresno Bee. In Fresno, he was part of a team that helped expand the newspaper’s reach into online storytelling, data and social media.

At the Foundation, he joins an editorial team that includes Bowles, a veteran journalist whose career included 10 years at The Associated Press, and Gary Pitzer, who has written in-depth articles for Western Water for more than 15 years.

Before the Fresno Bee, Beeman spent 24 years as a respected, award-winning reporter and editor at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, where he covered a variety of beats including water resources, the environment and health care and was the start-up editor for a zoned suburban edition of the newspaper. In 1998-99, he spent a year as a media fellow with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. He earned a degree in economics from California State University, Sacramento.