Together, the publications reach a weekly audience of about half a million people, according to The Media Audit. Weeklys also operates digital publishing businesses.[8]
The alt weeklies are free-distribution, tabloid-sized newspapers emphasizing news and analysis, local coverage and in-depth coverage of arts, culture and entertainment. The Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Hollister, Watsonville, Salinas Valley and King City community newspapers are larger format broadsheet publications that are home delivered.[9]
Good Times, founded in 1975, won the top award in the California Journalism Awards two years in a row and is the largest circulation newspaper in Santa Cruz County, California.[13][14]
The company has been a number of notable alumni, including British television journalist Louis Theroux, New York Times opinion writer Michelle Goldberg, News Director of Vice News Michael Learmonth, typographer Conor Mangat [15] and film producer Zack Stentz[16]
Community Weeklies
The company first began publishing community newspapers in 1990 with the purchase of the Los Gatos Weekly and Los Gatos Times-Observer, to form the Los Gatos Weekly-Times. During the 1990s the Silicon Valley Community Newspaper group expanded to include Saratoga News, Campbell Reporter, Cupertino Courier, Sunnyvale Sun and the Willow Glen Resident. It was sold to a company executive on Dec. 17, 2001.
Thirteen years later, when Weeklys, then known as Metro Newspapers, acquired Santa Cruz's Good Times on March 31, 2014, it also purchased the seller's Gilroy, Morgan Hill and Hollister newspapers and re-entered the community publishing arena. It later acquired long established titles in Watsonville, Scotts Valley, the Salinas Valley and Healdsburg, and opened a publication in Los Gatos. [17][18] The Healdsburg rescue attracted national interest after the purchase occurred within days of the 157-year-old publication's shutdown by a nonprofit owner.[4][5][6] "We are surprised, gratified and a little astonished," said Nancy Dobbs, president of the board of directors of Sonoma County Local News Initiative, which sold the newspaper's assets to Weeklys.[7]
History
In 1984 Dan Pulcrano put together a group of local Silicon Valley and entertainment industry investors and recruited LA Weekly executive David Cohen as co-publisher to launch Metro. From on initial circulation of 40,000 it grew to approximately 100,000.[8]
In 1990, Metro acquired Los Gatos Weekly, a newspaper Pulcrano had founded eight years earlier, and the Chicago Tribune-owned Los Gatos Times-Observer. The two were merged to become Los Gatos Weekly-Times.[8] The acquisition was the beginning of Metro's expansion into community journalism.
A second alt weekly, Metro Santa Cruz, began publishing in 1994. The same year, Metro Newspapers purchased the Sonoma County Independent, which, in October 2000, expanded its distribution to cover Napa and Marin counties and is now published under the North Bay Bohemian flag.
In 2015, Metro acquired the Pacific Sun; the Bohemian ceased distribution in Marin County and increased its Sonoma County and Napa County distribution.[20][21]
In 2020, the company introduced the Weeklys brand, acquired the East Bay Express, launched East Bay magazine and acquired the Scotts Valley-based Press Banner.[22][23][24]
In 2021, Weeklys acquired LunaGraphica Inc, a Silicon Valley design firm, which now operates as Metro.Agency. Cindy Couling, President of LunaGraphica, became the Director of Creative Services for Weeklys and Metro.Agency.
The company is operated by its founder and longtime executive editor, Dan Pulcrano.[26]
Silicon Valley Community Newspapers
Metro developed a group of weekly community newspapers, including the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, Saratoga News, Campbell Reporter, Willow Glen Resident and Sunnyvale Sun. Under Metro's ownership, the group won numerous awards, including the California Newspaper Publishers Association's "General Excellence" award in its Better Newspapers Contest. On December 17, 2001, Cohen, a co-founder of Metro, bought the group, which at the time included six publications and left to run Silicon Valley Community Newspapers as an independent company. Cohen sold it three years later to Knight Ridder which sold the group to McClatchy Corp. McClatchy immediately resold SVCN to Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group.[27] In 2014, Bay Area News Group marketing director Erika Brown announced that the newspapers would be distributed to subscribers of the Mercury News, rather than generally to homes in the community.[28]
Early online player
Metro was an early participant in the online publishing revolution, in 1993 launching the Livewire online service, one of the first online efforts by a non-daily newspaper publisher. The service offered free email accounts, online commerce, chats, posting forums, and online articles.
Virtual Valley, a similar service with an emphasis on covering Silicon Valley communities, was launched the following year and helped put the city governments of San Jose, Milpitas and Los Gatos online. Also in 1994, Metro established Boulevards, a network of web sites, each covering a major U.S. metropolitan area, that pre-dated Citysearch and Microsoft's short-lived "Sidewalk" service.
In 1995, Metro launched the online version of the newspaper on the web under the brand Metroactive that included several of its newspapers papers and later included a downloadable edition in PDF format.
Awards
Metroactive has received several awards[29] for its work, including:
Six papers in the Metro Newspapers group were honored for writing, editing and design at the California Newspaper Publishers Association Better Newspapers Awards, July 1997.
Three papers in the Metro Newspapers group won at the National Newspaper Association's 1995 contest, announced September 1996.
Five papers in the Metro Newspapers group were honored for writing, editing and design at the California Newspaper Publishers Association Better Newspapers Awards, July 1996.
Los Gatos is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population is 33,529 according to the 2020 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area just southwest of San Jose in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Los Gatos is part of Silicon Valley, with several high technology companies maintaining a presence there. Notably, Netflix, the streaming service and content creator, is headquartered in Los Gatos and has developed a large presence in the area.
The Santa Clara Valley is a geologic trough in Northern California that extends 90 miles (140 km) south–southeast from San Francisco to Hollister. The longitudinal valley is bordered on the west by the Santa Cruz Mountains and on the east by the Diablo Range; the two coastal ranges meet south of Hollister. The San Francisco Bay borders the valley to the north, and fills much of the northern third of the valley. The valley floor is an alluvial plain that formed in the graben between the San Andreas Fault to the west and the Hayward and Calaveras faults to the east. Within the valley and surrounding the bay on three sides are the urban communities of San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, and Alameda County, while the narrow southern reaches of the valley extend into rural San Benito County to Hollister. In practical terms, the central portion of the Santa Clara Valley is often considered by itself, contained entirely within Santa Clara County.
Metro is a free weekly newspaper published by the San Jose, California, based Metro Newspapers. Also known as Metro Silicon Valley, as well as Metroactive online, the paper serves the greater Silicon Valley area. In addition to print form, Metro can be downloaded in PDF format for free from the publisher's website. Metro also keeps tabs on local politics and the "chattering" class of San Jose through its weekly column, The Fly.
The Pacific Sun is a free distribution weekly newspaper published in Marin County, just north of San Francisco in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is the longest running alternative weekly in the nation and is published on Wednesdays. Since October 2019, Daedalus Howell has been its editor.
Metro Santa Cruz, a free-circulation weekly newspaper published in Santa Cruz, California from 1994 to 2009, was renamed the Santa Cruz Weekly on May 6, 2009. The weekly continues, under its new name, to cover news, arts and entertainment in Santa Cruz County, a coastal area that includes Capitola, Aptos, Boulder Creek, Scotts Valley and Watsonville.
Dan Pulcrano is a journalist, editor, publisher and newspaper group owner in Northern California. He is CEO and executive editor of Metro Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley's alternative newsweekly, as well as its sister publications around the Bay Area; Good Times, the North Bay Bohemian and the Pacific Sun and East Bay Express. The group also publishes ten community newspapers, as well as magazines and related digital titles.
Santa Cruz Weekly was a free-circulation weekly newspaper published in Santa Cruz, California. It began publishing under its current name on May 6, 2009; publication ceased when operations were merged with the competing Good Times weekly on April 2, 2014, with the merged company continuing as Good Times. Formerly known as Metro Santa Cruz, the alternative weekly covered news, people, culture and entertainment in Santa Cruz County, a coastal area that includes Capitola, Aptos, Boulder Creek, Scotts Valley and Watsonville.
Good Times is a free-circulation weekly newspaper based in Santa Cruz, California. Good Times is distributed in Santa Cruz County, a coastal area that includes Capitola, Rio del Mar, Aptos and Watsonville. It is owned by the Northern California–based Metro Newspapers. Dan Pulcrano is the CEO and executive editor.
Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259, as of the 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring San Benito County together form the U.S. Census Bureau's San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara metropolitan statistical area, which is part of the larger San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area. Santa Clara is the most populous county in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Northern California. The county seat and largest city is San Jose; with about 1,000,000 residents, it is the 10th-most populous city in the United States, California's third-most populous city and the most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area. The second- and third-largest cities are Sunnyvale and Santa Clara.
Zackary Lowell Stentz is an American writer and producer of film and television, journalist, novelist, and teacher, best known for his work on Marvel properties with former writing partner Ashley Edward Miller.
David Kinch is an American chef and restaurateur. He owned and operated Manresa, a restaurant in Los Gatos, California, which was awarded three Michelin stars in 2016. Kinch's California cuisine has strong French, Catalan and Japanese influences. Kinch opened a second restaurant in Los Gatos, called The Bywater, on January 12, 2016.
William J. "Billy" Craddock was an American author who published two novels in the early 1970s chronicling psychedelic and biker culture in California in the 1960s. Doubleday published Craddock's books Be Not Content: A Subterranean Journal in 1970, and Twilight Candelabra in 1972. Craddock has been called one of the seminal chroniclers of the psychedelic period, along with Timothy Leary, Alan Watts and Andrew Weil.
The California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC) is a freely-available, archive of digitized California newspapers; it is accessible through the project's website. The collection contains over six million pages from over forty-two million articles. The project is part of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research (CBSR) at the University of California Riverside.
The Morgan Hill Times is a weekly newspaper in Morgan Hill, California. It is Morgan Hill’s oldest continually operating business, tracing its history back to the Morgan Hill Sun, founded by George Edes on April 12, 1894.
The Gilroy Dispatch is an American weekly newspaper published in Gilroy, California.
The Hollister Free Lance is an American weekly newspaper published in Hollister, California and distributed in San Benito County, California.
The Sunnyvale Sun is a weekly newspaper published on Fridays serving the city of Sunnyvale, CA and surrounding Santa Clara county. Its circulation is estimated to be 21,350.
The Saratoga News is a local paper covering the city of Saratoga, California, in Santa Clara county. Published weekly on Tuesday, it has an estimated circulation of 13,240.
↑ Gogola, Tom (Dec 21, 2018). "Alt Together Now: The 'Pac Sun' in the '60s". PacificSun.com. Pacific Sun. Retrieved 22 May 2022. With the demise of the Village Voice last year, the Pacific Sun is now the oldest continuously published alternative weekly in the country.
↑ Richard von Busack, "Groening Pull," Metro Silicon Valley, July 4, 2012.
↑ GT Staff (May 18, 2021). "Good Times Wins Top Journalism Prize for Second Year". GoodTimes.sc. Good Times. Retrieved 22 May 2022. For the second year in a row, Good Times has won first place for General Excellence in the 2021 California Journalism Awards, the California Newspaper Publishers Association announced on Friday.
↑ "PLatelet a typeface designed by conor mangat"(PDF). Emigre. Emigre. Retrieved 22 March 2012. His exploits to date include spells in branding and new media at MetaDesign in San Francisco, editorial design for Metro Newspapers in Silicon Valley
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