BeaverCountian.com will be celebrating its upcoming 15th birthday with a renewed commitment to local news and the full-time return of its founder.
Launched back in January 2011, the site’s hyper-local coverage of happenings in Beaver County, Pennsylvania has been celebrated through the years with thirteen Golden Quill awards for excellence in journalism from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania.
Beaver Countian’s investigations have led to public action, judgments, arrests and criminal convictions. Its reporting has been regularly cited by regional, national and international news outlets.
While news gathering by BeaverCountian.com never ceased, 2025 saw updates on the site slow as its founder, John Paul Vranesevich, spent time researching artificial intelligence (AI) and the disruptive societal shifts it will soon be causing.
Before his second life as a journalist, John Paul was known as an internationally renowned computer security expert, regularly tapped to lecture at places like the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, FBI headquarters in D.C., CIA headquarters, the National White Collar Crime Center, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He’s appeared in hundreds of publications and books, has been profiled by Vanity Fair magazine, and his life rights were optioned by John Wells Productions — the producer of E.R. and The West Wing.
John Paul’s new multi-year commitment to full-time reporting for BeaverCountian.com starting in 2026 will bring much needed water to a news desert Beaver County now finds itself in.
“One of my biggest takeaways after exploring the technologies of artificial intelligence is that news and information, as gathered and verified by human intelligence, will become even more vital than it already is for society,” said John Paul.
“News as an industry has all but died in our county and our country. I have come to realize that with the unprecedented changes AI will soon be causing to civilization, the biggest impact I can have in this world is by remaining dedicated to my very small little patch of it.”
John Paul said he feels AI’s dramatic impacts will lead to a renewed focus on community.
“It may sound ironic, but I believe artificial intelligence will see humanity returning to its primal roots, with a focus on family, neighborhoods, and the local community. I believe people will be retreating from the toxic digital worlds we have created for ourselves and once again cherish the real world we experience around us. I look forward to telling those stories.”
BeaverCountian.com’s reporting through the years has been hailed as some of the most consequential by a hyper-local news outlet in the nation.
In July 2024, former president Donald Trump was shot by a would-be assassin in neighboring Butler County. BeaverCountian.com’s vast network of law enforcement sources in the region allowed it to lead the way in coverage, with national news outlets citing its exclusive reporting.
BeaverCountian.com’s work in helping to inform the country about a critical event in its history led the Washington Post to publish a profile about its efforts.
From 2018 through 2021, BeaverCountian.com’s John Paul served as a consulting investigative reporter for CBS News, working to produce multiple episodes of 48 Hours about the unsolved murder of a local elementary school teacher.
With assistance from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), BeaverCountian.com set state-wide precedent in 2017 for an online news publication, when a Pennsylvania Common Pleas Judge ruled it is covered by the state’s Reporter Shield Law and constitutes a newspaper of general circulation.
It was the first time in Pennsylvania that a new media reporter invoked the protection of anonymous sources and was the result of an unsuccessful subpoena filed by the Beaver County Treasurer and her daughter, seeking the identities of anonymous commenters.
When he’s not reporting or programming, John Paul is an avid traveler who has spent considerable time in all 50 states in his search for meaningful experiences to help him better understand the diversity of our nation and its people.
See Also: Visiting All 50 States Renewed My Faith In Our Nation
