EASTSIDE : 9 Papers Will Still Print After Takeover
The takeover last week of Southern California Community Newspapers by its creditors will not immediately affect the operations of nine Eastside community newspapers in the chain.
The remaining 40 employees will continue to publish papers in the Northeast Newspapers subsidiary, including the Belvedere Citizen/Eastside Journal, Lincoln Heights Bulletin-News and the El Sereno Star.
The chain was forced to close 20 area newspapers and lay off 85 workers when its banks took over operations after the group could not find a buyer, said Art Aguilar, Northeast Newspapers president and editor. Eastside newspapers that have closed include the East Los Angeles Tribune and East Los Angeles Commerce.
Aguilar said plans are under way for the remaining newspapers to expand coverage to include some of the areas where newspapers have ceased operations.
“We’ll go back into those areas with new papers because we know the importance of the community newspapers,” he said.
The newspaper chain filed for bankruptcy-law protection in September, citing a potential lawsuit. The company’s banks put the chain up for sale for $1 million last month, but were not able to sell it by their deadline.
“The sad thing about this is, this has nothing to do with the way the industry is going,” Aguilar said. “We had a bad couple of years just like everybody else, but we wouldn’t have had to make any cuts at all if we were still (operating). It’s insensitivity on the part of the banks.”
Publisher Ric Trent said he offered the bank its asking price of $1 million to be paid over 13 weeks, but was turned down.
Trent, who bought the newspaper chain in 1987 from Scripps Howard, said the original loan was for $9 million, which he said he paid down to $6.9 million. After selling a building in South Gate and operations in Fullerton to the Orange County Register, he owed about $5 million, which was renegotiated to $3.2 million, he said.
In August, Trent said, he was threatened with a lawsuit by the Fair Housing Council relating to a classified ad run in one of the newspapers. According to Trent, the ad was for an apartment building that read, “Adults preferred.”
Rather than risk losing a lawsuit, in which he would have to pay legal fees near $500,000 if he lost, Trent said, he decided to filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Other newspapers that will remain in operation include the Highland Park News-Herald and Journal, the Eagle Rock Sentinel, the Mt. Washington Star Review and the South Pasadena Journal.
