Palo Alto Daily News
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Palo Alto Daily News | |
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 The September 11, 2001 front page of the Palo Alto Daily News |
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| Type | Free daily newspaper |
| Format | Compact / Tabloid |
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| Owner | MediaNews Group |
| Publisher | Carole Leigh Hutton |
| Editor | Lucinda Ryan |
| Founded | December 7, 1995 |
| Headquarters | Menlo Park, CA United States |
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| Website: paloaltodailynews.com | |
The Palo Alto Daily News is a free daily newspaper, originally independent and serving Palo Alto, California, now owned by MediaNews Group and located in Menlo Park.[1] It is published seven days a week and has a circulation of 67,000 (a figure that includes all of its zoned editions). The Daily News is distributed in red newspaper racks and in stores, coffee shops, restaurants, schools and major workplaces.
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[edit] Format and content
The Daily News has a distinctive format. Pages are 16 inches long and 10.75 inches wide, dimensions which are thought to make the Daily News easier to hold than traditional broadsheet papers, but allow more stories to be published per page than a typical tabloid. Advertisements are found at the bottom of the front page and on every inside page. The page count of the paper ranges from 56 to 120 per day.
The newspaper prints a combination of local stories and news from a number of wire services including The Associated Press, Bay City News, The New York Times and McClatchy-Tribune (the former Knight-Ridder Tribune). Local columnists include John Angell Grant, Larry Magid and John Reid. Syndicated opinion columns include those by Bob Herbert, Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd.
[edit] History
The Palo Alto Daily News debuted on December 7, 1995 with an initial circulation of 3,000. Within nine months, the paper was in the black. The paper generates all of its revenue from advertising. The original publishers, Jim Pavelich and Dave Price, understood that the advertising would reach more potential customers if the paper were free and thus widely available.
The newspaper's press run is determined by consumer demand; by 1997, the circulation had nearly tripled to 10,000 copies a day.
On August 9, 2000, the newspaper expanded into San Mateo County by opening three dailies, the San Mateo Daily News, Redwood City Daily News and Burlingame Daily News. These became the first free daily newspapers in San Mateo County, although within two years, other copycat free dailies funded by out-of-town venture capitalists would start in that area, replicating the format of the Daily News. These copycats printed papers on similar sized paper, with ads at the bottom of the front page (unique at the time to the Daily News) and similar typefaces.
On May 15, 2002, the Daily News launched the Los Gatos Daily News. In addition to Los Gatos, it serves Saratoga, Campbell, Cupertino and western San Jose.
In the first quarter of 2003, the combined circulation of the Daily News reached 55,000 per day, and on March 23 a home-delivered Sunday edition was added.
On November 12, 2004, the Daily News beat the competition by putting out an "extra" minutes after a jury in Redwood City convicted Scott Peterson of murdering his wife Laci and their unborn son. Editors put the "Redwood City Daily News" flag at the top of the Extra because the trial was taking place in that city, but it was distributed in all of the communities served by the Daily News, including Palo Alto.
On February 15, 2005, Knight Ridder, then the nation's second-largest newspaper publisher, bought the Palo Alto Daily News and its four sister papers for an undisclosed amount. Price and Pavelich, the publishers, were asked to stay on during the transition, but they left by the end of the year.
In May of 2005, the Daily News launched the East Bay Daily News, which serves Berkeley, Emeryville, Piedmont, Albany and the Oakland neighborhood of Rockridge.
In January of 2006, Shareef Dajani, formerly general manager of the Knight Ridder-owned Hills Newspapers, a group of weeklies in Alameda County, was named publisher. In March, Dajani fired editor Diana Diamond, a long-time Palo Altan who was also a columnist. Her dismissal triggered numerous letters-to-the-editor and the competing Palo Alto Weekly picked up her column. Dajani replaced Diamond with Lucinda Ryan, who had worked with him at the Hills Newspapers.
In March 2006, Knight Ridder agreed to be purchased by The McClatchy Company, owner of the Sacramento Bee among other papers. McClatchy later announced it would sell 12 of the 32 Knight Ridder dailies, including the San Jose Mercury News and two other regional papers, The Monterey County Herald and the Contra Costa Times. The Palo Alto Daily News, along with other papers, was included in the Mercury News' 'bundle,' to be sold as one entity. MediaNews Group, which already owned several area papers, agreed to acquire the Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Monterey County Herald and the St. Paul Pioneer Press of Minnesota for $1 billion, with $263 million of that coming from the Hearst Corporation, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle. The two deals — the sale of Knight Ridder to McClatchy, and McClatchy's sale to MediaNews — closed in August 2006. However, a lawsuit filed by San Francisco real estate developer Clint Reilly is challenging the sale on anti-trust grounds. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston issued anorder November 28, 2006 forbidding Hearst and MediaNews from working together on national advertising sales or distribution. Illston said in her order that it is possible she may order MediaNews to divest itself of the Mercury News bundle. The trial is scheduled to start April 30, 2007.
In January of 2007, Dajani was replaced by Carole Leigh Hutton, former editor and publisher of the Detroit Free Press when it was owned by Knight Ridder. When Knight Ridder sold the Free Press to Gannett on August 3, 2005, Hutton was named Knight Ridder's vice president of news, a position she held until the company folded in 2006.
In May of 2008, Daily News founders Dave Price and Jim Pavelich announced that they were reviving the original paper, in its original headquarters, but under the name Palo Alto Daily Post.[2]
