Filling void left by New Times, CityBeat sets its own rhythm.

In San Antonio recently to rub shoulders at the annual alternative newsweeklies conference, David Comden, group publisher of Southland Publishing Inc., ran into "60 Minutes II" Producer Jill Landes and asked what brought her there.

"Not much here for big broadcast TV," he thought.

Landes wasn't interested in doing a piece on the alternative press, but was trolling for stories mainstream media had missed.

"You guys break enough stories for me to be here," she told him.

It was a moment of validation for Comden, whose Los Angeles CityBeat weekly has just wrapped its first year in business.

It hasn't been exactly smooth sailing, but CityBeat and its sister startup in the San Fernando Valley, ValleyBeat, together print roughly 100,000 copies each week. After a good bit of turnover, a senior management team has finally settled in and Southland is now projecting revenues this year will hit $6.5 million for its five publications.

Southland has been publishing small, regional papers since 1997, when Mike Flannery, owner of Sylmar-based Valley Business Printers, bought the Ventura County Reporter. But it was an antitrust case in Los Angeles that vaulted the company into the major market.

CityBeat and ValleyBeat were launched in June 2003, into the vacuum left by New Times Los Angeles after its owner, NT Media, agreed to close its paper in a deal with LA Weekly publisher Village Voice Media.

As part of the arrangement, Village Voice closed its alternative weekly in Cleveland, where it competed with an NT Media paper.

In 2002, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against the two companies, alleging the deal created a monopoly for each firm in their respective markets. The next year, the companies agreed in a consent decree to abandon parts of their contracts that were construed as anti-competitive, paid fines and made the assets of the closed papers available for sale.

Southland stepped in and bought the 600 news racks, computers, office furniture and other items left behind by New Times.

(At the same time, Flannery's printing business, Valley Business Printers, stopped printing the LA Weekly. Flannery said it was a coincidence as his long-term contract to print the LA Weekly was ending.)

Flannery established papers serving the Valley, central L.A. and Pasadena. Plans for papers in northern Orange County and the South Bay are under review.

But Flannery, who describes himself as "85 percent retired" and content to let Comden run the show, said Southland may have to spend a bit more time digesting what it has. Together, Southland's papers have a combined circulation of 215,000 and more than 70 employees.

"The company has grown tremendously over the past three years. We look to stabilize it over the next six months to a year, then pursue another expansion," Flannery said.

Expansion Plans

Southland has been preoccupied with getting its senior management team in place.

Last November, Comden replaced CityBeat publisher Rick Haelig with Charles Gerencser, the 30-year-old wunderkind who was publisher of New Times before joining Southland in 2001 to oversee its papers in Pasadena and San Diego.

"He (Haelig) was with us for six months, and we had to make some changes. It wasn't a good fit at the time," said Comden, who put in stints as sales manager of the San Diego Reader and general manager of the Sacramento News & Review before becoming publisher of Southland's Ventura County Reporter in 1998.

Haelig did not return calls seeking comment.

Everything at Southland is done with a healthy dose of fear that its rival, the 800-pound gorilla LA Weekly, is not far behind.

But there's almost no comparison between the two. The LA Weekly has hundreds of pages each issue, while the LA CityBeat is averaging between 60 and 64, of which 36 to 40 are taken by advertising. Comden wants to boost the weekly page count to 72 by yearend.

The Southland papers have sought to undercut the competition on ad sales, offering rates less than half those charged by the Weekly. A full-page ad in the LA Weekly, circulation 215,000, was $4,333 based on a rate card effective April 1. The same ad in running in both the CityBeat and ValleyBeat (combined circulation: 100,000) is $2,006, unchanged from May 2003.

Also, beginning with this week's issue, CityBeat began distributing about 30,000 of its news rack copies about 12 hours earlier, trying beat the Weekly to the street. Distributor Don Margolin said he began filling the racks at 10 p.m. July 7, a half a day ahead of the normal

distribution time. Asked if the papers were profitable, Gerencser responded: "There are no shareholders waiting to line their pockets with profits. But we are closer today to sustainability than the New Times ever was."

Gaining acceptance

Southland first expanded beyond Ventura County when Flannery received a call in 2001 from a Tribune Co. official, who asked Flannery if he wanted to bid on the Pasadena Weekly. Within two weeks, the 65-year-old printer had a second newspaper under his belt.

Ventura Newspaper Inc. changed its name to Southland Publishing to take into consideration the two far-flung properties. By August of 2002, Southland bought the San Diego Lifestyle and Music Magazine, and re-launched it under the title of San Diego CityBeat.

The more recent growth spurt in L.A. has prompted some centralization of operations. Southland's corporate headquarters moved recently from Pasadena to the Mid-Wilshire offices where CityBeat has been housed over the past year. Classified sales operations for all of its Southern California papers were moved to the L.A. office from Pasadena, leaving behind business and billing departments.

The biggest nod to the fledgling papers came while the 44-year-old Comden was at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies conference. While there, he was informed that CityBeat had been unanimously voted into the newsweekly club by a 10-0 vote--a rare happening.

"It's a fairly rigorous process to get in, and in the case of CityBeat, we gave it a good review," said Richard Karpel, executive director of the 126-member Washington, D.C.-based association. "It's a big deal."

In the last four years, 59 papers have applied for admission to the group, which monitors press freedom issues and provides marketing and accounting help for small publications. Only three were admitted by unanimous vote, Karpel said.

The vote also underscores the re-emergence of competition for the Weekly, he said.

"It's significant tot people in L.A. who are looking for more newspapers rather than fewer," he said.