San Diego Company Buys Fullerton Newspaper

The Fullerton News Tribune--Orange County’s oldest continuously published daily newspaper until it went weekly in 1985--has been sold to a San Diego company as part of a deal that included the sale of 23 other weeklies owned by Scripps-Howard Newspapers.

Neither the buyer, Community Media Enterprises, nor Cincinnati-based Scripps-Howard would divulge the sale price.

But one informed industry source said the newspapers, all of which are located in the Los Angeles basin, are worth about $15 million. Community Media also received a printing press in South Gate as part of the deal.

42,000 Circulation

With a circulation of 42,000, the News Tribune is the largest of the 24 free-distribution weekly newspapers that Community Media bought. The papers have a combined circulation of 424,000.

The Fullerton paper began publication as the Fullerton Tribune on April 6, 1891, and later became the Daily News Tribune. In January 1985, it changed its name to the Fullerton News Tribune and began a new life as a weekly, with a severely trimmed staff and circulation.

Community Media was formed in January by a group headed by Richard Trent, 41, who resigned as publisher of California magazine to start the venture.

Though the Scripps-Howard purchase was the company’s first acquisition, Community Media plans to make at least two more purchases during the next year, Trent said.

In 1982-85, Trent was president of Harte-Hanks Communications operations in San Diego and publisher of the Chula Vista Star-News, then a Harte-Hanks property.