Los Angeles Times suburban sections
Encyclopedia
The Los Angeles Times
suburban sections or zone sections were printed between 1952 and 2001 as adjuncts to the main newspaper to cover the news of and sell advertising space in various parts of Southern California that the Times considered to be in the prime part of its circulation
area. The giant Los Angeles daily had a "more aggressive zoning policy than perhaps any other newspaper" because its local market was so widespread, a writer for The New York Times opined. But as two of these and six other specialized sections were eliminated in 1995 because of a downturn in newspaper revenues, Times editor Shelby Coffey called them simply "a noble experiment."
in April 1952 under the direction of Mike Straszer, who was in charge of all succeeding zoned editions until 1958. An editorial in the San Gabriel Valley section explained that
The next zoned editions were opened in the San Fernando Valley
and in the Glendale
areas on March 4, 1956. A one-year anniversary layout listed the names of key people working on the San Fernando section as Straszer, Maurice Stoller, Mary Nogueras, Albert Markado, Norman Dash, Richard W. Degnon and Fred Baumberger. By the end of April 1957, zoned editions were appearing in the San Gabriel Valley
(since 1952), Southern Communities
(around 1954), Orange County
(1954), the San Fernando Valley
(1956), Glendale
-Verdugo Hills
(1956), as well as the newest sections, the Westside (1957) and Centinela-South Bay
(1957).
In November 1958, a copy of the Centinela-South Bay section that carried a story about the 50th anniversary of Inglewood, California
, was placed in a time capsule beneath the cornerstone of the Inglewood City Hall "with the expectation it will be opened in the year 2008."
The frequency of the San Fernando Valley section was expanded in April 1960 to twice a week — on Thursdays and Sundays. That same twice-weekly schedule was adopted for the Westside section in April 1961. Times editor Nick B. Williams wrote about the suburban editions in that year:
A shake-up in the Times editorial department in April 1981 resulted in the transfer of H. Durant Osborne, 52, from his job as city editor
of the main newspaper to "an administrative role in the Suburban Community Sections." Osborne was to work under Reece, who remained Suburban Sections editor. The move, among others, was billed as a way to "intensify coverage." In 1983, Robert Rawitch replaced Art Berman as Suburban Sections editor, and by November 1993, William Rood was the editor of the sections.
recruitment at the Los Angeles Times, journalism investigative reporter David Shaw
found that the zone sections had become "a training ground of sorts for the main paper" and that that practice had "helped create the paper's poor reputation with minorities" because they had to start in a suburban office rather than downtown.
After the Rodney King riots of April 1992, however, Times editor Shelby Coffey III and publisher David Laventhol gave the green light to establishing an entirely new kind of zoned section — City Times, a 28-page tabloid covering the central city neighborhoods "from Hispanic East Los Angeles
to Koreatown to mostly black South Central
and Southwest Los Angeles." Mary Lou Felton, a 28-year-old Latina who lived in the riot area, was chosen to head the venture editorially. The new section made heavy use of color to distinguish it from the Times' other zoned sections. Sports was covered extensively. Ed Cray wrote in the American Journalism Review:
City Times cost $1.5 million annually and was not profitable. It had a low penetration in the central city, with many copies just given away.
, to the south of Los Angeles was a different matter. In that year its population stood at 1.29 million and, according to Time magazine,
Under the direction of Orange County managing editor
Ted Weegar, a separate editorial staff — including a reporter stationed in Sacramento, the state capital, each day took apart the editorial product prepared in Los Angeles and "Orafied" — or localized — the entire newspaper, from front page to sports, especially for Orange County readers. The result was printed in and distributed from a modern, $7 million printing plant in Costa Mesa
in Orange County. The cost was estimated to be some $9.5 million a year "to give suburbanites and exurbanites the feeling that they are reading a world-minded paper with a home-town emphasis." Times publisher Chandler was quoted as saying that satellite publishing, as it was called, "seems to make sense in metropolitan markets, where papers are interested in furthering their economic base, away from the center city."
In April 1978, the Times began a daily San Diego County edition, with a 26-person news staff, plus advertising and circulation employees.
New York Times reporter Alex S. Jones reported in 1990 that there had developed a struggle between "traditionalists," who wanted all Times subscribers to receive "essentially the same newspaper," and those who sought to "Orafy" the whole paper, "in looks and local focus." In that year, a new edition was started in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, and a weekly Spanish-language publication called El Tiempo was also being planned.
Traditionalists were opposed to expanding the existing San Fernando Valley zoned pages into a semi-independent publication with its own focus and its own printing plant. That circumstance had been completed by 1989, when Jeffrey S. Hall, vice president of marketing for the Times was named to a new position of president of the San Fernando Valley edition, directing business operations there. The editorship remained with Charles Carter, who reported to Suburban Editor Robert Rawitch. The edition had a circulation of 230,827 daily and 266,373 Sundays. In 1997, Julia C. Wilson was named president of both the San Fernando Valley and Ventura editions, succeeding Jeffrey S. Klein.
"Otis Chandler's dream of being a newspaper from Santa Barbara to Tijuana isn't going to happen in this economy," Phyllis Pfeiffer, the edition's general manager, said.
In January 1994 the zones were downsized again when publication frequency was reduced to once a week from four times in the South Bay and from twice weekly in the San Gabriel and Southeast/Long Beach sections. "The Westside section, serving the city's most affluent areas, including Beverly Hills and Westwood, will continue to appear twice a week," the New York Times reported.
By 1999, the suburban sections had been almost entirely supplanted by a new venture, Our Times, a Los Angeles Times subsidiary that published separate community-oriented newspapers in Brea
, Conejo Valley
, the Crenshaw District in Los Angeles, Montebello
and Pico Rivera
, Irvine
, Laguna Hills
, Mission Viejo
, Santa Clarita
, Santa Monica
, Sherman Oaks, Simi Valley
and Ventura
. But in 2000 the Times announced it would discontinue publication of its 14 Our Times community news sections.
Finally, in September 2001 the Times ended publication of its zoned San Gabriel Valley, South Bay and Westside sections. The cuts "signaled another blow to an ambitious effort by the Times to take on what Publisher John Puerner and Editor John Carroll
described as block-by-block community news coverage," according to the trade source NewsInc. The big-city daily would thenceforth leave community coverage up to six smaller newspapers published by a subsidiary, Times Community News.
The Times did continue publishing five separate, regionally focused editions for wider geographic areas — the Los Angeles metropolis, the San Fernando Valley, Orange County, Ventura County and the Inland Empire of Riverside
and San Bernardino
counties.
In December 2005, the Times announced it would close its Chatsworth plant, where the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County editions had been published. The Times ended printing at its Costa Mesa Orange County plant in June 2010 but kept its editorial and business operations open there.
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
suburban sections or zone sections were printed between 1952 and 2001 as adjuncts to the main newspaper to cover the news of and sell advertising space in various parts of Southern California that the Times considered to be in the prime part of its circulation
Newspaper circulation
A newspaper's circulation is the number of copies it distributes on an average day. Circulation is one of the principal factors used to set advertising rates. Circulation is not always the same as copies sold, often called paid circulation, since some newspapers are distributed without cost to the...
area. The giant Los Angeles daily had a "more aggressive zoning policy than perhaps any other newspaper" because its local market was so widespread, a writer for The New York Times opined. But as two of these and six other specialized sections were eliminated in 1995 because of a downturn in newspaper revenues, Times editor Shelby Coffey called them simply "a noble experiment."
Suburbs and neighborhoods
The first zoned section was published on Sundays only for the San Gabriel ValleySan Gabriel Valley
The San Gabriel Valley is one of the principal valleys of Southern California, United States. It lies to the east of Los Angeles, to the north of the Puente Hills, to the south of the San Gabriel Mountains, and west of the Inland Empire. It derives its name from the San Gabriel River that flows...
in April 1952 under the direction of Mike Straszer, who was in charge of all succeeding zoned editions until 1958. An editorial in the San Gabriel Valley section explained that
. . . the Southland has grown so rapidly it has been impossible to pay specific attention to every community in the Sunday paper. . . . Consequently the idea of "zoning" was born. This means that papers delivered to a certain area are to contain a special section devoted to the particular interest of that area. The San Gabriel Valley Section is the first of these.
The next zoned editions were opened in the San Fernando Valley
San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
and in the Glendale
Glendale, California
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...
areas on March 4, 1956. A one-year anniversary layout listed the names of key people working on the San Fernando section as Straszer, Maurice Stoller, Mary Nogueras, Albert Markado, Norman Dash, Richard W. Degnon and Fred Baumberger. By the end of April 1957, zoned editions were appearing in the San Gabriel Valley
San Gabriel Valley
The San Gabriel Valley is one of the principal valleys of Southern California, United States. It lies to the east of Los Angeles, to the north of the Puente Hills, to the south of the San Gabriel Mountains, and west of the Inland Empire. It derives its name from the San Gabriel River that flows...
(since 1952), Southern Communities
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...
(around 1954), Orange County
Orange County, California
Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...
(1954), the San Fernando Valley
San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
(1956), Glendale
Glendale, California
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...
-Verdugo Hills
Verdugo Mountains
The Verdugo Mountains are a small, rugged mountain range of the Transverse Ranges system, located just south of the western San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles County, Southern California...
(1956), as well as the newest sections, the Westside (1957) and Centinela-South Bay
South Bay, Los Angeles
The South Bay is a region of the southwest peninsula of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The name stems from its geographic features stretching along the southern shores of Santa Monica Bay which forms its western border.The picture at right uses the broadest definition of the...
(1957).
In November 1958, a copy of the Centinela-South Bay section that carried a story about the 50th anniversary of Inglewood, California
Inglewood, California
Inglewood is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, southwest of downtown Los Angeles. It was incorporated on February 14, 1908. Its population stood at 109,673 as of the 2010 Census...
, was placed in a time capsule beneath the cornerstone of the Inglewood City Hall "with the expectation it will be opened in the year 2008."
The frequency of the San Fernando Valley section was expanded in April 1960 to twice a week — on Thursdays and Sundays. That same twice-weekly schedule was adopted for the Westside section in April 1961. Times editor Nick B. Williams wrote about the suburban editions in that year:
. . . they publish almost no crime news, no sensational or scandalous information, . . . they concentrate on community development, club news, social news and the normal, active lives of average and above-average citizens.
A shake-up in the Times editorial department in April 1981 resulted in the transfer of H. Durant Osborne, 52, from his job as city editor
City editor
A city editor is a title used by a particular section editor of a newspaper. They are responsible for the daily changes of a particular issue of a newspaper that will be released in the coming day...
of the main newspaper to "an administrative role in the Suburban Community Sections." Osborne was to work under Reece, who remained Suburban Sections editor. The move, among others, was billed as a way to "intensify coverage." In 1983, Robert Rawitch replaced Art Berman as Suburban Sections editor, and by November 1993, William Rood was the editor of the sections.
Minorities
In a 1990 investigation of minorityEthnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
recruitment at the Los Angeles Times, journalism investigative reporter David Shaw
David Shaw (writer)
David Shaw was an American journalist who was best known for his reporting for the Los Angeles Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1991...
found that the zone sections had become "a training ground of sorts for the main paper" and that that practice had "helped create the paper's poor reputation with minorities" because they had to start in a suburban office rather than downtown.
After the Rodney King riots of April 1992, however, Times editor Shelby Coffey III and publisher David Laventhol gave the green light to establishing an entirely new kind of zoned section — City Times, a 28-page tabloid covering the central city neighborhoods "from Hispanic East Los Angeles
East Los Angeles (region)
East Los Angeles is the portion of the City of Los Angeles that lies east of Downtown Los Angeles, the Los Angeles River and the unincorporated areas of Lincoln Heights, west of the San Gabriel Valley, East Los Angeles and City Terrace, south of Cypress Park, and north of Vernon, California and...
to Koreatown to mostly black South Central
South Los Angeles
South Los Angeles, often abbreviated as South L.A. and formerly South Central Los Angeles, is the official name for a large geographic and cultural portion lying to the southwest and southeast of downtown Los Angeles, California. The area was formerly called South Central, and is still widely known...
and Southwest Los Angeles." Mary Lou Felton, a 28-year-old Latina who lived in the riot area, was chosen to head the venture editorially. The new section made heavy use of color to distinguish it from the Times' other zoned sections. Sports was covered extensively. Ed Cray wrote in the American Journalism Review:
The majority of the cover stories deal with cross-community, cross-neighborhood problems: check-cashing services as a banking system for the poor; the true cost of enterprise zonesUrban Enterprise ZoneIn the United States, Urban Enterprise Zones , also known as Enterprise Zones, are intended to encourage development in blighted neighborhoods through tax and regulatory relief to entrepreneurs and investors who launch businesses in the area. UEZs are areas where companies can locate free of...
in South Los Angeles; the largely Anglo command of the Los Angeles Police Department; school vandalism; and the pervasive fear of crime on central city bus lines.
City Times cost $1.5 million annually and was not profitable. It had a low penetration in the central city, with many copies just given away.
Growth
By 1968, the experience of the weekly zoned editions had generally been positive — but Orange CountyOrange County, California
Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...
, to the south of Los Angeles was a different matter. In that year its population stood at 1.29 million and, according to Time magazine,
Times publisher Otis ChandlerOtis ChandlerOtis Chandler was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions...
watched the [suburban sections] process with growing dissatisfaction, then decided that the only solution is for a newspaper to grow the way a modern city-community grows. . . . an ever-expanding circle of satellite towns, with citizens showing an increased interest in local affairs. To give them the local news they want, Chandler decided there was no substitute for being on the spot. The result appeared last week: the Orange County edition, edited, printed and partly written by a 32-man Times satellite staff operating entirely in Orange County.
Managing editor
A managing editor is a senior member of a publication's management team.In the United States, a managing editor oversees and coordinates the publication's editorial activities...
Ted Weegar, a separate editorial staff — including a reporter stationed in Sacramento, the state capital, each day took apart the editorial product prepared in Los Angeles and "Orafied" — or localized — the entire newspaper, from front page to sports, especially for Orange County readers. The result was printed in and distributed from a modern, $7 million printing plant in Costa Mesa
Costa Mesa, California
Costa Mesa is a city in Orange County, California. The population was 109,960 at the 2010 census. Since its incorporation in 1953, the city has grown from a semi-rural farming community of 16,840 to a primarily suburban and "edge" city with an economy based on retail, commerce, and light...
in Orange County. The cost was estimated to be some $9.5 million a year "to give suburbanites and exurbanites the feeling that they are reading a world-minded paper with a home-town emphasis." Times publisher Chandler was quoted as saying that satellite publishing, as it was called, "seems to make sense in metropolitan markets, where papers are interested in furthering their economic base, away from the center city."
In April 1978, the Times began a daily San Diego County edition, with a 26-person news staff, plus advertising and circulation employees.
New York Times reporter Alex S. Jones reported in 1990 that there had developed a struggle between "traditionalists," who wanted all Times subscribers to receive "essentially the same newspaper," and those who sought to "Orafy" the whole paper, "in looks and local focus." In that year, a new edition was started in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, and a weekly Spanish-language publication called El Tiempo was also being planned.
Traditionalists were opposed to expanding the existing San Fernando Valley zoned pages into a semi-independent publication with its own focus and its own printing plant. That circumstance had been completed by 1989, when Jeffrey S. Hall, vice president of marketing for the Times was named to a new position of president of the San Fernando Valley edition, directing business operations there. The editorship remained with Charles Carter, who reported to Suburban Editor Robert Rawitch. The edition had a circulation of 230,827 daily and 266,373 Sundays. In 1997, Julia C. Wilson was named president of both the San Fernando Valley and Ventura editions, succeeding Jeffrey S. Klein.
Decline
On November 6, 1992, the Times announced it would stop publishing its San Diego County edition and eliminate 500 jobs throughout the company through a voluntary buyout and normal attrition. A New York Times reporter called the move "the result of an advertising slump in Southern California" which accompanied "the retrenchment of the military and aerospace industries" and saidIndustry analysts described the actions as drastic. . . . while other papers have scaled back zoned editions, analysts could not name another big newspaper that had closed one. . . . The Times has been unable to stop suburban newspapers from gaining market share in areas like Orange County . . . and the San Fernando Valley . . . regions The Times once presumed were part of its empire. . . . in hard economic times, advertisers cut back their zoned newspaper advertising because they view it as secondary to the coverage they can get in local papers.
"Otis Chandler's dream of being a newspaper from Santa Barbara to Tijuana isn't going to happen in this economy," Phyllis Pfeiffer, the edition's general manager, said.
In January 1994 the zones were downsized again when publication frequency was reduced to once a week from four times in the South Bay and from twice weekly in the San Gabriel and Southeast/Long Beach sections. "The Westside section, serving the city's most affluent areas, including Beverly Hills and Westwood, will continue to appear twice a week," the New York Times reported.
By 1999, the suburban sections had been almost entirely supplanted by a new venture, Our Times, a Los Angeles Times subsidiary that published separate community-oriented newspapers in Brea
Brea, California
Brea is a city in Orange County, California. The population, as of the 2010 Census was 39,282.The city began as a center of crude oil production, was later propelled by citrus production, and is now an important retail center because of the large Brea Mall and the recently redeveloped Brea Downtown...
, Conejo Valley
Conejo Valley
The Conejo Valley is a region spanning both southeastern Ventura County and northwestern Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States...
, the Crenshaw District in Los Angeles, Montebello
Montebello, California
Montebello is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, in the southwestern part of the San Gabriel Valley. It is located on of land just east of downtown Los Angeles. It is considered part of the Gateway Cities, and the city is a member of the Gateway Cities Council of...
and Pico Rivera
Pico Rivera, California
Pico Rivera is a city located in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. The city is situated approximately 11 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, on the eastern edge of the Los Angeles basin, and on the southern edge of the area known as the San Gabriel Valley...
, Irvine
Irvine, California
Irvine is a suburban incorporated city in Orange County, California, United States. It is a planned city, mainly developed by the Irvine Company since the 1960s. Formally incorporated on December 28, 1971, the city has a population of 212,375 as of the 2010 census. However, the California...
, Laguna Hills
Laguna Hills, California
Laguna Hills is a city located in southern Orange County, California, United States. Its name refers to its proximity to Laguna Canyon and the much older Laguna Beach. Other newer cities nearby—Laguna Niguel and Laguna Woods—are similarly named.-Geography:...
, Mission Viejo
Mission Viejo, California
Mission Viejo is a city located in southern Orange County, California, U.S. in the Saddleback Valley. Mission Viejo is considered one of the largest master-planned communities ever built under a single project in the United States, and is rivaled only by Highlands Ranch, Colorado, in its size...
, Santa Clarita
Santa Clarita, California
Santa Clarita is the fourth largest city in Los Angeles County, California, United States and the twenty-fourth largest city in the state of California. The 2010 US Census reported the city's population grew 16.7% from the year 2000 to 176,320 residents. It is located about northwest of downtown...
, Santa Monica
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
, Sherman Oaks, Simi Valley
Simi Valley, California
-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Simi Valley had a population of 124,237. The population density was 2,940.8 people per square mile...
and Ventura
Ventura County, California
Ventura County is a county in the southern part of the U.S. state of California. It is located on California's Pacific coast. It is often referred to as the Gold Coast, and has a reputation of being one of the safest populated places and one of the most affluent places in the country...
. But in 2000 the Times announced it would discontinue publication of its 14 Our Times community news sections.
Finally, in September 2001 the Times ended publication of its zoned San Gabriel Valley, South Bay and Westside sections. The cuts "signaled another blow to an ambitious effort by the Times to take on what Publisher John Puerner and Editor John Carroll
John Carroll (journalist)
John S. Carroll was the editor of the Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun. During his tenure the Times won 13 Pulitzer Prizes.-Early career:...
described as block-by-block community news coverage," according to the trade source NewsInc. The big-city daily would thenceforth leave community coverage up to six smaller newspapers published by a subsidiary, Times Community News.
The Times did continue publishing five separate, regionally focused editions for wider geographic areas — the Los Angeles metropolis, the San Fernando Valley, Orange County, Ventura County and the Inland Empire of Riverside
Riverside County, California
Riverside County is a county in the U.S. state of California. One of 58 California counties, it covers in the southern part of the state, and stretches from Orange County to the Colorado River, which forms the state border with Arizona. The county derives its name from the city of Riverside,...
and San Bernardino
San Bernardino County, California
San Bernardino County is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 2,035,210, up from 1,709,434 as of the 2000 census...
counties.
In December 2005, the Times announced it would close its Chatsworth plant, where the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County editions had been published. The Times ended printing at its Costa Mesa Orange County plant in June 2010 but kept its editorial and business operations open there.
Notable staffers
- Al Martinez, whose columns in the San Fernando Valley and Westside editions made him one of the top three essay columnists named by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in 1987 He later won a Pulitzer Prize.