Inside of Inside

Look out, Union-Tribune, here comes Neil Morgan, who was fired by the paper this spring, and his old sidekick Bob Witty, who used to help Morgan run the Copley-owned, now-defunct San Diego Tribune. The pair, along with Barbara Bry, an ex-L.A. Times reporter and Harvard business school grad who married and later divorced millionaire Democratic La Jolla developer Pat Kruer, are part of the nonprofit "Voice of San Diego," a new website that sources say intends to take direct aim at the U-T's SignOnSanDiego.com Internet operation. Bankrolling the venture is said to be a foundation run by La Jolla fatcat venture-capital investor Ralph B. "Buzz" Woolley, owner of Coronado's Glorietta Bay Inn, among other concerns. Woolley last popped onto the public stage in March, when he was identified in a San Francisco Chronicle article along with Wal-Mart heir John Walton as financial backers of Bay Area Democrat Ted Lempert's 11th district state senate primary campaign. Both Woolley and Walton were reported by the paper to be big fans of using taxpayer-funded vouchers to pay for private-school tuition. Lempert lost his legislative bid badly. Key participants in the new website have close ties to UCSD, including Morgan, whose wife Judith, a freelance travel writer, is a longtime member of the institution's PR advisory board; Woolley, whose wife, lawyer Ann Parode, is university counsel; and Bry, who once worked for Connect, UCSD's so-called tech transfer arm founded by the late Bill Otterson and overseen by UCSD extension dean Mary Walshok.