San Diego Reader
The San Diego Reader is an alternative press newspaper in San [Diego County, California]. Published weekly since October 1972, the Reader is distributed free on Wednesday and Thursday via street boxes and cooperating retail outlets.
History
Founder Jim Holman, a navy veteran, worked for the Chicago Reader before starting up in San Diego. The initial press run of the San Diego Reader was 20,000 copies that cost $400 to print. In 1989, it was printing 131,000 copies a week and in 2015, the circulation was 90,000. In 1974 the office occupied O’Sullivan Square, a handsome brick building on Kettner Blvd. In the late 70s they moved to a converted industrial building at 635 State Street. In 1988, the Reader moved into a former restaurant in Little Italy and moved to offices in Golden Hill in 2012.In a 1989 story about the paper, the Los Angeles Times wrote that it had developed a reputation as being "liberal", and contrasted that to Holman's morality-driven rules for the paper, such as refusing to publish advertisements promoting abortion services and prohibiting personal advertisements seeking homosexual relationships. He also runs the anti-abortion California Catholic Daily website from the same offices.
Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, 30 employees agreed to take pay cuts equivalent to half of their pay.
In February 2024, Jim Holman announced that the Reader has a new owner/editor Matt Lickona, who bought the paper for one dollar, and that print publication would be shutting down. The online version of the paper will continue.