Irvine’s growing base of community newspapers will soon have a new entrant, one led by the former editorial page editor of the Orange County Register.
Brian Calle, who currently serves as publisher and part-owner of embattled alternative newspaper LA Weekly, recently filed plans with the state to start a new media business under the Irvine Weekly name.
Calle is the sole manager of the new business, according to state filings from late July.
Calle said that the Irvine Weekly would operate under the same umbrella as the LA Weekly, and that the new paper would ramp up in the next month.
“We will be a new voice in Irvine,” Calle said. “There’s so much cool stuff going on [here].”
The LA Weekly’s parent company is Street Media, which does business as Semanal Media.
It’s owned by a group of mostly Orange County-based investors, including lawyer Wayne Gross, real estate developers Paul Makarechian and Michael Mugel, and Steven Mehr, head of Irvine-based media firm WebShark360.
Calle created Semanal Media last November, after leaving the Register and its Denver-based parent company, Digital First Media.
His stint at Semenal has been rocky, at best. The paper made a flurry of editorial cuts once Semanal bought it last year, and has since been beset by advertiser and reader boycotts.
The publication cancelled several events that were a fundamental pillar of its business plan in previous years, and has published a newspaper continually smaller in editorial content and advertising.
LA Weekly is run independently and has separate ownership from the local alternative paper OC Weekly, owned by Fountain Valley-based Duncan McIntosh Co.
Duncan McIntosh—whose portfolio includes Editor & Publisher magazine and a handful of boating and maritime-focused publications—bought OC Weekly in 2016 for an undisclosed price; at the time of the sale the free weekly paper reported distribution of 45,000.
Ownership Squabbles
Calle has been largely mum since a lawsuit filed Aug. 27 against him and other LA Weekly investors by co-investor David Welch, a lawyer with close ties to the cannabis industry.
Welch’s lawsuit first brought to light Calle’s other media venture.
According to the lawsuit, Calle, Gross and Mehr, “devoted time that should have been spent working to undo the damage they inflicted on the LA Weekly to a separate publication, tentatively titled the Irvine Weekly, that would outwardly be similar to the LA Weekly, but focused more on the Orange County market.”
According to the July filing with the California Secretary of State’s office, the Irvine Weekly would be set up at an office not far from John Wayne Airport.
The building’s currently used by Sweet Law Group, which handles personal injury-type cases.
Eclectic Group
Irvine has seen a small group of community papers take flight the past few years, after the Register stopped distributing the Irvine World News as a stand-alone publication, one of many cuts to its local coverage.
The new Irvine papers include:
• The Irvine Standard, a monthly publication bankrolled by Newport Beach’s Irvine Co. It kicked off operations this year. The paper features a number of former Register reporters and highlights positive aspects of the city and its amenities.
• Irvine City News is a monthly publication that reports distributing 100,000 copies per issue. Its coverage is similar in some respects to the Irvine Standard, but typically provides more emphasis on the area around the Orange County Great Park.
Officials with Aliso Viejo-based FivePoint Holdings LLC, developer of the Great Park Neighborhoods, have stated they’re not involved in the publication.
• The most overtly political publication in the area is the Irvine Community News & Views, whose coverage and editorial slant largely mirrors the views and agenda of former Irvine mayor Larry Agran.
Its coverage tends to pick up around election season.
Matthew Blake is the media and entertainment reporter for sister publication Los Angeles Business Journal.
Mark Mueller contributed to this report.
