The seven employees who left Newport This Weekearlier this month after a dispute with Lissette Prince de Ramel, the paper's socialite editor-owner, plan to start their own publication, according to their lawyer.

Tom Kelly says the former staffers want to compete head-on with their ex-employer and hope to publish the first issue of the Newport Voice in early August. It will be a daunting challenge for a handful of journalistic dissidents to come close in matching the fiscal resources of Prince de Ramel, a countess and multi-millionaire dollar heiress of the Prince Meat Company, but Kelly promises, "It's all going to be great fun in Newport."

The seven departing employees, representing reporting, editing, and advertising jobs, left July 1 after Prince de Ramel, the owner and top editor of Newport This Week, didn't comply with their request that she give editorial control to her daughter, managing editor Diana Oehrli. The former employees were "dismayed at the managerial behavior of Ms. Prince," who fired Oehrli, Kelly says.

The last straw came because of concerns about journalistic integrity, Prince de Ramel's management style, and the alteration of content within the newspaper, says Kelly, declining to get into specifics. Prince de Ramel didn't returned a phone call seeking comment.

Newport This Week, a free arts and entertainment weekly with some community news, began as a biweekly tourist publication in 1972. De Ramel Prince bought it in 1995.

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com.

Issue Date: July 25 - 31, 2002