New Names and Faces in War to Woo North County Newspaper Readers

Spring offensives are under way in the North County newspaper war.

Papers are changing their names, changing their looks, even poking the competition in the eye--whatever it takes to grab a share of a growing market.

Starting last Monday, the North County Blade-Citizen (nee Oceanside Blade-Tribune) shifted to morning publication.

The San Diego Tribune, hoping to lure away readers who still prefer an afternoon paper, retaliated with cheeky ads that say: “We chased the competition clear into tomorrow morning.”

The San Diego Union is hiring more reporters and revving up its circulation effort. North County Community Newspapers just started the weekly Vista Voice.

The Los Angeles Times plans a weekly supplement, North County Focus, starting April 19. The pilot issue was in last Sunday’s paper.

The (Camp Pendleton) Scout and the (Escondido) Times Advocate have been radically redesigned. The Scout, which also circulates off-base, calls its third page “The Second Front.”

The T-A is awash with soft colors and a modified USA Today look. I like it, but, on days when the colors are fuzzy, I feel like I’m swimming underwater in a heavily chlorinated pool with my eyes open.

There’s more.

The gentleman’s agreement that made San Marcos the reportorial dividing line between the T-A and Blade-Citizen has been breached. Each is now invading the other’s turf.

I called the editor of the Valley Roadrunner in Valley Center. Surely the weekly Roadrunner (circulation 3,800) would be an island of journalistic stability.

Wrong. The Roadrunner has new ownership and more advertising salesmen.

And the new owners just bought an every-other-monthly tabloid called The Messenger that serves the Interstate 15 corridor, Bonsall-Hidden Meadows-Lawrence Welk Village. Plans are to make it a full-sized weekly starting April 18.

Proof certain that demography is destiny.

Condemned Went Quietly

The impending execution--now delayed--of Robert Alton Harris brought up the gruesome journalistic question of how the 501 persons executed by the state acted in their final moments.

Except for a few notable cases of gripping their cell bars and bawling for mercy, most killers went quietly.

Among the meekest have been the 13 from San Diego. Here’s a sample:

- San Quentin Warden Jack Dickson said of Raymond Lesley Cartier, the San Diego sailor executed Dec. 28, 1960, for mutilating his wife, “He was one of the calmest I’ve ever seen.”

- When Henry Glatman, 31, went to the gas chamber Sept. 18, 1958, for killing three women. Acting Warden Louis Nelson called it “the most routine” execution he’d ever witnessed.

- Lloyd E. Sampsel, 52, the “yacht bandit” who killed a Chula Vista man during a robbery, chatted amiably with guards about the straps used to pinion his arms just before he was executed May 25, 1952.

- Tully McQuate, 44, convicted of murdering his landlady for $250 and dumping her body in San Diego Bay, asked that guards release his arms as he mounted the gallows at Folsom Prison on May 24, 1935.

“I want to walk up those steps alone, warden,” he said.

His last wish was granted.

Coming and Going

Here and there.

- How nasty is the referendum over the Human Dignity Ordinance going to be?

Here’s a spare quote from one of the opponents at Tuesday’s San Diego City Council meeting: “Sodom and Gomorrah had a good Human Dignity Ordinance, too.”

- The San Diego chapter of the National Foundation of Ileitis and Colitis puts out a quarterly newsletter. It’s called Inside Tract.

- It’s true: There’s a Hollywood and Vine intersection in Campo.

- The county is putting wire mesh over windows to keep birds from flocking to the Chula Vista jail. Now, if there were only a way to keep prisoners from fleeing.