Lloyd Shepherd, a former online publishing director with Yahoo Europe and Guardian Unlimited, is launching his own UK blog network, Messy Media. Shepherd left his second stint at Yahoo (as European director of news, sport and information) in June to go freelance. Details are sketchy, but Shepherd and fellow Yahoo alum Andrew Levy aim to roll out a series of news blogs: “We believe there’s a clear opportunity in Britain to use the blogging format to do proper journalism – to entertain and inform. Proper design, professional editorial development and a serious commercial proposition are all part of that.” Shepherd had also previously been deputy director of digital publishing at Guardian Unlimited.