Santa Ana : 12 Publishers Show Interest in Magazine

Twelve Orange County publishers have contacted the city to express interest in taking over Santa Ana Magazine, which closed its doors last week after citing low advertising revenues, City Manager Robert C. Bobb said.

Bobb said he met with council members Dan Young and Patricia McGuigan on Monday to discuss the fate of the magazine. He said the council would probably make a decision within 30 days on whether to continue the magazine “experiment,” in which the city pays for postage costs, and the magazine in return includes all city information, including recreation, street sweeping and city development projects, and distributes a minimum of 100,000 copies.

A meeting with the interested publishers is a likely next step, Bobb said, adding that anyone taking over the magazine would have to be familiar with Orange County and have a competent advertising staff available. In the meantime, city information will be distributed through flyers and a recreation brochure.

The magazine, which debuted in November, will not be printed in April. Former publisher Dayle Thomas recently filed for bankruptcy after publishing only 32,000 copies of the March issue.

The city’s contract calls for at least 100,000 copies, with a copy mailed to each of the city’s 90,000 residential and business addresses. Bobb noted that Santa Ana didn’t lose anything on the magazine because it saved the costs of the individual publications through which it had previously disseminated information.