The San Mateo Daily News and four other free newspapers in the Daily News chain are being purchased by Knight Ridder, the companies said Tuesday.
Knight Ridder, owner of the San Jose Mercury News, will take control of Priceless LLC, which operates five newspapers in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The paper's headquarters is in Palo Alto.
The Daily News is a competitor of the Daily Journal, which is published independently by Bigfoot Media-San Mateo Inc.
The move is part of a strategy to further penetrate the free-distribution publishing market, Knight Ridder CEO Tony Ridder said Tuesday in a statement.
"Free-distribution newspapers, shoppers, lifestyle magazines and publications specializing in autos, real estate and employment" are all part of Knight Ridder's business, he said, and will become more so in the near future.
The Palo Alto Daily News has a 24,000 weekday circulation and five newspapers combined print more than 55,000 copies, according to a press release on the Daily News' Web site.
Daily Journal Publisher Jerry Lee said Knight Ridder's acquisition shows the viability of the free daily newspaper business model.
Lee said he welcomed Knight Ridder's entry into the free daily market.
Knight Ridder, he said, "conducts itself with high journalistic standards."
Dave Price, James Pavelich and Dave Danforth began publishing the Palo Alto Daily News in 1995, two years after Chicago's Tribune Co. folded the Peninsula Times Tribune.
The trio had all published newspapers in Vail and Aspen, Colo.
In 1998, Danforth left the others in a dispute, but he still owns part of the Daily News and the Daily Journal. He also owns the Aspen Daily News.
In 2000, the Daily News opened sister papers in San Mateo, Redwood City and Burlingame, and another began in 2001 in Los Gatos.
Price did not return a call for comment.
Knight Ridder, the second-largest newspaper chain in the country, said the free dailies offer "micro-local" coverage that larger metro dailies do not.
The Examiner is owned by another Colorado resident, billionaire Philip Anschutz.
It publishes five editions from San Francisco to Menlo Park and this month it started a six-day-a-week tabloid in Washington D.C.
Free tabloids are also growing in Europe, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
Palo Alto Weekly Publisher Bill Johnson said Tuesday night the sale is great news for readers.
"Peninsula residents have every reason to be optimistic that Knight Ridder will transform the Daily News into a responsible and respectable daily newspaper with a continuing strong local focus," Johnson wrote in a e-mail.
"We all welcome such a change."
Stephen Baxter can be reached by e-mail at stephen@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 109. What do you think of this story? Send a letter to the editor: Letters@smdailyjournal.com.
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