SANTA PAULA : New Weekly Paper Quickly Fills Void

When the 105-year-old Santa Paula Chronicle closed unexpectedly last month, several Ventura County newspapers indicated they would fill the news void by publishing Santa Paula editions.

But former employees of the Chronicle--saying the town needs a newspaper of its own--scooped the competition and today will publish the first edition of a weekly community newspaper called the Santa Paula Times.

“Local coverage is important to this community,” said Don Johnson, the Chronicle’s former publisher who started the new weekly with the help of other Chronicle veterans.

“We’re going to do the same thing we were doing before, but we’ll do it on a weekly basis,” said Johnson, who was with the Chronicle for 13 years before Santa Clara Valley Publishing decided to pull the plug.

The paper will initially be distributed free to 8,500 homes in Santa Paula, Johnson said. The Chronicle, which published five days a week, was circulated to about 2,300 paying customers.

Johnson declined to disclose the source of financing for the newspaper’s start-up, but said he hopes that advertising revenue will quickly cover publishing costs.

Other members of the Chronicle’s editorial staff have joined the fledgling weekly, but Johnson said he is unsure how large a staff the paper will eventually have. Tim Dewar, who was hired as the Chronicle’s managing editor less than two months before the paper folded, will remain as the managing editor, Johnson said.

Peggy Kelly, a Chronicle staff writer who is part of the new paper’s staff, said a local paper will be able to publish the kind of news a larger paper wouldn’t carry.

“Let’s face it, the big dailies won’t give that hometown look at the hometown news,” Kelly said. “They won’t publish the birth announcements, the Brownie pictures, or put in a police log. A small town is filled with people who want to know what’s going on in their town.”