New Community News Section Makes Its Debut
Times readers in the Conejo Valley and surrounding communities today will begin receiving a new local news section called Our Times.
Our Times will be published Monday through Friday. It will cover Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park, Westlake Village, Oak Park, Agoura and Agoura Hills. It will be available only in copies of The Times that circulate in those areas.
The section will feature local news stories and features on issues ranging from city council and county government to youth sports and the environment. It will be written and produced by Times Community News, a Times Mirror Co. subsidiary that publishes 11 community newspapers in Los Angeles, Orange and now Ventura counties.
“Our Times is designed to add to the already strong local coverage we provide in the Conejo Valley and surrounding areas by both editions of The Times,” said Julia C. Wilson, president of the Valley and Ventura County editions of The Times. “Both our readers and our advertisers in these communities have asked us to give them more. We think both groups are going to be pleased with Our Times. This will give us an added dimension in covering local news, complementing the award-winning coverage of both the Valley and Ventura County editions.”
Scott Steepleton, 35, previously a Times correspondent for the Ventura County Edition, will be city editor of the new section. He will oversee an editorial staff of six.
The section will have its own reader forum and letters pages--a place to debate Conejo Valley issues.
“I hope Our Times will become a community newspaper that everybody in the Conejo Valley and the surrounding communities will embrace as their own,” said Steepleton, a Thousand Oaks resident.
William Lobdell, editor of Times Community News, said, “The idea is to give the readers the ultimate community newspaper along with a great metropolitan newspaper so that they get the best of both worlds.”
On March 26, a weekly Our Times edition debuted on Los Angeles’ Westside, serving Santa Monica, Venice and nearby communities.
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