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Published on 09/08/1999 All articles from this issue

Town Crier incorporated as new company

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Town Crier Staff Report

Reflecting the spirit of Town Crier Founder's Day, Sept. 9 - the date the Los Altos Town Crier was first published 52 years ago - publisher Paul Nyberg has announced the transformation of the paper into a stand-alone company.

Nyberg said the newspaper has spun off from Select Communications Inc. to become The Town Crier Company Inc., which has its own board of directors. Eight employees who have been with the paper five years or longer have been given stock in the new company.

For its first 25 years, from its founding in 1947 until 1962, the Town Crier was locally owned and operated by Los Altan David MacKenzie and partners. Over the next 31 years, the paper was owned by a series of out-of-town newspaper conglomerates, including the Tribune Company of Chicago. In 1993, the paper returned to local ownership under longtime Los Altos residents Paul and Liz Nyberg, magazine publishers with their own company, Select Communications, Inc.

The eight employees who now own stock in the new The Town Crier Company Inc. are Bruce Barton, editor; Howard Bischoff, circulation and business manager; Margaret Caesar, classified ad manager; Marilyn Carranza, production manager; Helen DeCoursey, classified manager; Chris Post, ad services coordinator; Clyde Noel, reporter; and Susan Glaze, advertising sales manager.

"Owning stock in the Town Crier makes me feel good," Post said. "I have worked for the Town Crier for 17 years before the Nybergs bought it and now to be able to own stock makes all the hard work worthwhile."

"Joseph Pulitzer, who created the prestigious Pulitzer Prize awards for news media, once said that newspapers should be conducted as a public institution, with motives higher than mere gain," Nyberg said. "It is in that spirit that we have begun taking steps to try to protect the Town Crier from ever again falling into the hands of absentee landlords who fill it with the maximum number of ads and simply run it as a profit center."

The five-member board of directors also own stock in the company, indicative of the paper's investment in the local community. The board members are Bischoff; Los Altos attorney Mark Smallhouse; Jim Wall, president of the Bank of Los Altos; and the Nybergs.

Smallhouse grew up in Los Altos and "was once a newsboy who delivered the Town Crier," Nyberg said. "He is a talented lawyer with just the right mix of hometown spirit and legal know-how to be a perfect board member."

"I'm delighted the Nybergs have created a mechanism to keep the Town Crier on the local scene," said Wall, a Los Altos resident. "Dedicated local investors have a way of keeping a business focused on matters important to the local residents, businesses, and other organizations operating in our communities.

"I think it will be challenging, fun, and rewarding to be a part of a local medium at the beginning of the Information Age. How information is organized, disseminated, and interpreted is changing rapidly, and I look forward to being involved in that process as it relates to the Town Crier."

The new board of directors will focus primarily on the overall business aspects of the company, Nyberg said, with editorial policies and procedures left to the discretion of the staff.