The American Journalism Review has an update on the Bay Area News Project, the nonprofit being created by the UC Berkeley j-school, KQED and Wells Fargo heir F. Warren Hellman to cover local news. AJR says the project will announce its choice of executive editor in “early December” (that’s about now) and start producing news “in the spring.”

The story has nothing new on whether The New York Times will use the project’s copy. All a Times spokeswoman would say is, “We’re having in-depth conversations with the Bay Area News Project, and the conversations have been fruitful.”

The project got going back in March when Hearst Corp. said it would close the Chronicle if it didn’t get concessions from its unions. Since then the Chron has eliminated 481 jobs and insiders are saying the paper is back in the black. There’s no more talk of the Chronicle closing. So it may turn out that the Bay Area News Project will have to compete with the paper it planned to replace.