The original
Contra Costa Times was founded by
Dean Lesher in 1947, and served central
Contra Costa County, especially Walnut Creek. However, Lesher began expanding by purchasing weekly newspapers in neighboring communities, as well as two eastern Contra Costa daily papers, the
Antioch Ledger and the
Pittsburg Post-Dispatch. Originally the weekly newspapers were free for shoppers, but Lesher gradually converted the papers to "controlled circulation" in 1962, an aggressive and expensive new strategy that called for free delivery of a copy to every household while asking readers to voluntarily buy subscriptions. Ultimately, the weeklies were converted into zoned daily editions called the
West County Times, serving
Richmond,
El Cerrito, and western Contra Costa County; the
San Ramon Valley Times, serving the suburbs of the
San Ramon Valley south of Walnut Creek; and the
Valley Times serving
Livermore and the suburbs of eastern Alameda County. The two East Contra Costa dailies were merged into a single edition, the
Ledger-Dispatch, which gradually faded away, first being reduced to a thrice-weekly insert in the
Contra Costa Times, then being replaced outright by the
East County Times. Corporate ownership Lesher died May 13, 1993. On August 29, 1995, his widow Margaret sold the privately held company to the
Knight Ridder newspaper chain for $360 million. Knight Ridder was later purchased by the
Sacramento-based
McClatchy Company in June 2006 in a deal valued at $4.5 billion. The deal was contingent on McClatchy selling off 12 of the 32 newspapers it had just purchased, including the
Contra Costa Times. On April 26, 2006, it was announced that MediaNews Group (now Digital First Media), then headed by
William Dean Singleton, would purchase four of the "orphan 12", including the
Contra Costa Times and
San Jose Mercury News, for $1 billion. Although that transaction was completed on August 2, 2006, a lawsuit claiming antitrust violations by MediaNews and the
Hearst Corporation had also been filed in July 2006. The suit, which sought to undo the purchase of the four newspapers, was scheduled to go to trial on April 30, 2007. While extending until that date a preliminary injunction preventing collaboration of local distribution and national advertising sales by the two media conglomerates, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on December 19, 2006, expressed doubt over the legality of the purchase. On April 25, 2007, days before the trial was scheduled to begin, the parties reached a settlement in which MediaNews Group preserved its acquisitions. As part of a reorganization announced in 2011, the
Contra Costa Times was slated to be merged with the
East County Times, San Ramon Valley Times, Tri-Valley Herald and
San Joaquin Herald. However, BANG announced on October 27, 2011, that it would retain the
Contra Costa Times and
East County Times mastheads and only combine the
Tri-Valley Herald,
San Joaquin Herald, and
San Ramon Valley Times under a new
Tri-Valley Times masthead, reducing the number of mastheads from five to three. On April 5, 2016, the three remaining
Times editions were merged along with the company's other newspaper in the East Bay, the
Oakland Tribune, which it had owned since 1992. The combined paper was named the
East Bay Times. In 2017, the staff of the
East Bay Times was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting, for "relentless coverage of the
Ghost Ship warehouse fire, which killed 36 people at a warehouse party, and for reporting after the tragedy that exposed the city's failure to take actions that might have prevented it". ==Community weeklies==