Daily Press turns 3
The Daily Press turns 3 years old today.
Launched in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 by three former colleagues at a newspaper in Aspen, Colo., Santa Monica’s only daily newspaper has grown from its first print run of eight pages to today’s issue, which is 24 pages. Each edition has been free.
The Daily Press has defied its predecessors by turning a profit in each of the last five months, something critics said was near impossible in this oceanfront city of 84,000.
“The corpses of dead dailies litter this country like the battlefield at Antietam,” began a Jan. 9, 2002 Los Angeles Times article about the Daily Press. The LA Times twice failed to sustain an ongoing news product in the local Santa Monica market following the demise of the 123-year-old Even ing Outlook in 1998.
Local news has never been in short supply. In the three years since the Daily Press launched, Santa Monica issues frequently have made national and international headlines, while local issues have bitterly divided residents and made for emotionally charged letters to the editor.
The fatal stabbing of a standout Santa Monica High School student. The rape and murder of a Santa Monica College student. Elderly driver Russell Weller’s deadly drive through a downtown Farmers’ Market. City Hall’s failed attempt to ban ATM surcharges. City Hall’s successful effort to make oil companies pay for MtBE contamination. Its ban on smoking at the beach. The entrance of Kennedy family scion Bobby Shriver into local politics. Homelessness. Traffic.
A3E,“We in Santa Monica are a very active political community and I think we’re starved for news,” said reader Annette Shamey, 65, a former teacher and life-long resident of Santa Monica who this December will step down after serving 12 years on the SMC board of trustees.
Native Santa Monican Judi Bloom agreed.
“Santa Monica is a complicated, politically charged city with many competing interests,” said Bloom, 53, a parent and former editor at the Evening Outlook and LA Times. “If any town needs a daily newspaper it’s this one... We really need and deserve information about city government, the schools, policy makers and so much more that happens under the radar.”
The Daily Press drops 16,000 copies on the streets of Santa Monica, West LA, Brentwood and Venice each day, and some 5,000 people subscribe to the paper online. Publisher Ross Furukawa pegs the number of daily readers at more than 30,000 because the paper is free and most copies are read more than once. Furukawa, 34, hopes the paper will eventually expand to 70 or 80 pages, with circulation reaching 60,000. Home delivery was not part of the original model, but hasn’t been ruled out.
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently,” Furukawa said. “It’s something we are seriously considering, now that we know it’s what our readers want and it works for our advertisers.”
Known by the moniker “A newspaper with issues,” the Daily Press operates out of offices on the Third Street Promenade, a location picked in part for its proximity to City Hall and the local courthouse. Papers are printed at a press in Culver City.
Set up as a partnership among Furukawa, Editor Carolyn Sackariason and entrepreneur Dave Danforth, who has started other small dailies across the country, the Daily Press has published close to 1,000 issues. It relies on a handful of editorial and advertising interns, and contributions from about a dozen columnists. Special sections have developed in the paper for entertainment, real estate and business, and Associated Press reporters contribute state, national and international news.
Furukawa said the paper will continue to grow, with special feature supplements and expanded hard news coverage. Readers expect as much.
“As a life-long resident of Santa Monica, what I miss most is a comprehensive local newspaper,” Shamey said. “The Evening Outlook did that for us and I think that our community needs that desperately... The fact that so many of us rush out, we make a special trip out sometimes, to pick up the paper, means we’re hungry for the Daily Press, an expanded Daily Press, a more comprehensive Daily Press.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 13, 2004. Read the original PDF.