Contra Costa Times

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contra Costa Times

The December 7, 2006 front page of the
Contra Costa Times
Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet
Owner MediaNews Group
Publisher John Armstrong
Editor Chris Lopez
Founded 1947
Headquarters 2640 Shadelands Drive
Walnut Creek, CA 94598
Flag of United States United States
Circulation 178,911 Daily
190,613 Sunday[1]
ISSN 0192-0235
Website: ContraCostaTimes.com

The Contra Costa Times is a daily newspaper (circulation 106,000 daily, 113,000 Sunday) based in Walnut Creek, California. The paper serves Contra Costa and eastern Alameda counties, in the eastern part of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Times also publishes four other editions under different titles (West County Times, East County Times, San Ramon Valley Times, and Valley Times) but essentially the same content, serving distinct communities within its circulation area, giving it a combined circulation of 178,911 daily and 190,613 Sunday[1] -- making it the 63rd largest newspaper in the United States and the 3rd largest in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is owned by MediaNews Group.

Contents

The original Contra Costa Times was founded by Dean Lesher in 1947, and served central Contra Costa, especially Walnut Creek. However, Lesher began expanding by purchasing weekly newspapers in neighboring communities, as well as two eastern Contra Costa daily papers, the Antioch Ledger and the Pittsburg Post-Dispatch. Originally the weekly newspapers were originally free shoppers, but Lesher gradually converted the papers to "controlled circulation" in 1962, an aggressive and expensive new strategy that called for free delivery of a copy to every household while asking readers to voluntarily buy subscriptions. Ultimately, the weeklies were converted into zoned daily editions called the West County Times (serving Richmond, El Cerrito, and western Contra Costa County), San Ramon Valley Times (serving the affluent suburbs of the San Ramon Valley south of Walnut Creek) and the Valley Times (serving Livermore and the suburbs of eastern Alameda County), and the two East Contra Costa dailies were merged into a single edition, the Ledger-Dispatch, which gradually faded away, first being reduced to a thrice-weekly insert in the Contra Costa Times, then being replaced outright by the East County Times.

The Times still produces 11 weekly community newspapers focusing on local news: Brentwood News (Brentwood, the town)), Walnut Creek Journal (Walnut Creek), Concord Transcript (Concord), Contra Costa Sun (Lafayette, Moraga, and Orinda), Pleasant Hill/Martinez Record (Pleasant Hill and Martinez), West County Weekly, and the components of the old Hills Newspapers chain (The Montclarion (The Oakland hills neighborhood of Montclair), The Piedmonter (Piedmont), Alameda Journal (Alameda), Berkeley Voice (Berkeley), and El Cerrito Journal (El Cerrito)).

Lesher died May 13, 1993. On August 29, 1995, his widow Margaret sold the privately held company to the Knight Ridder newspaper chain for $360 million. Knight Ridder was later purchased by the Sacramento-based McClatchy Company in June 2006 in a deal valued at $4.5 billion. The deal was contingent on McClatchy selling off 12 of the 32 newspapers it had just purchased, including the Contra Costa Times.

On April 26, 2006, it was announced that MediaNews Group, headed by William Dean Singleton, would purchase four of the "orphan 12," including the Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News, for $1 billion. Although that acquisition was completed on August 2, 2006, a pending lawsuit claiming antitrust violations by MediaNews and the Hearst Corporation is scheduled to go to trial on April 30, 2007. While extending until that date a preliminary injunction which prevents collaboration of local distribution and national advertising sales by the two media conglomerates, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on December 19, 2006 expressed doubt over the legality of the purchase.[2]

  1. ^ a b 2006 Top 100 Daily Newspapers in the U.S. by Circulation (PDF). BurrellesLuce (2006-03-31). Retrieved on 2007-03-05.
  2. ^ Egelko, Bob. "Hearst-MediaNews ruling extended", San Francisco Chronicle, 2006-12-20. Retrieved on 2007-01-05.


This article about a Californian newspaper is a stub. You can help by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../c/o/n/Contra_Costa_Times_f0aa.html"
Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.