Dan Pulcrano
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dan Pulcrano is a journalist, newspaper owner and Web executive in San Jose, California. He is CEO and executive editor of Metro Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley’s alternative newsweekly, as well as its sister publications, Metro Santa Cruz and The Bohemian (Santa Rosa). He also owns and runs Boulevards New Media, a national leader in online city guides.
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[edit] Early Life and Career
Born in suburban New Jersey in 196CK, Pulcrano entered the publishing field while still in grade school, when he surreptitiously produced an “underground newspaper” using a mimeograph machine. He was expelled for his efforts.
While a student at UC Santa Cruz, Pulcrano worked at Leviathan, a monthly run by a Jewish student club, and founded the Student Guide, a successful commercial venture. During summer vacation in 1978, he went to Los Angeles to help publisher Jay Levin launch the LA Weekly.
[edit] Weekly Newspapers
Pulcrano came to Silicon Valley in 1982 and founded the Los Gatos Weekly. The bootstrapped startup was a direct challenge to the vernerable (and moribund) Los Gatos Times-Observer, published since 1881. The young newspaper thrived -- Pulcrano purchased the Times-Observer in 1990 and merged the two publications.
In 1985, Pulcrano expanded his efforts into San Jose with the publication of Metro. Inspired by Levin’s LA Weekly and the alt-weeklies that were then appearing in every American city, Metro offered sharp-edged political analysis as well as comprehensive calendar listings, music reviews, and critical coverage of the performing and visual arts, as well as movie reviews.
Over the next decade, Pulcrano came to own five more community weekly newspapers in Santa Clara County, including the Saratoga News, Cupertino Courier, Sunnyvale Sun, Willow Glen Resident, and the Campbell Reporter. In 1999, these newspapers and the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, were spun off as the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers group, and taken over by Pulcrano’s then-partner, David Cohen. They are now owned by Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Corp.
In 1994, Pulcrano returned to his old college hometown to launch Metro Santa Cruz. He purchased the Santa Rosa Independent in YEARTK. In YEARTK, he expanded the paper’s coverage and distribution area and renamed it The North Bay Bohemian.
[edit] Online Pioneer
In 1993, Pulcrano wrote a private paper called: The Alternative Press at the Crossroads: Will We Be Players in the New Information Age Or Road Kill on the Digital Highway? That same year, he launched
Boulevards New Media Inc. was born in 1994 with the idea of "inventing the local media of the future," and today holds a unique position among Silicon Valley Internet companies: it has never been sold, acquired, venture-funded or taken public.
