New patch of newspapers crop up on the Westside; defying industry trend, publishers enter saturated market.

As if to defy the general media malaise that has been a staple of the 1990s Southern California newspaper market, five new weekly and monthly publications have sprung up in the western regions of the Los Angeles area in the past year.

Newcomers to the scene include the Westwood News and the Santa Monica News, the Beverly Hills News and the Westsider, all of which are free and distributed directly to residences. Another new addition is L.A. Weekend, an entertainment-oriented tabloid that is inserted in the community weeklies published by Coast Media Newspapers, as well as distributed by bulk drop in specific Westside spots.

All the recent activity would indicate that the area has been under-represented by the print media. But such is simply not the case.

The Los Angeles Times has a twice-a-week Westside insert. Copley Press Inc.'s The Outlook is distributed daily to subscribers in Santa Monica and surrounding communities, and the Outlook's segmented sister publications are distributed for free in communities from Venice to Brentwood.

Coast Media runs a string of nine free weeklies that reach from Inglewood to Playa del Rey to Cheviot Hills. Beverly Hills has the Beverly Hills Courier, a weekly published for the past 28 years. Marina del Rey has its own weekly, the Argonaut. And alternative weeklies The Village View and the Los Angeles Reader both focus strongly on the Westside.

"There's always been a certain attraction to the Westside," said Jeff Hall, founder of the Brentwood News in 1991, the Westwood News in October 1993, and the Santa Monica News this April. The tabloids, all distributed monthly, have a combined circulation of 90,000.

"There's a feeling of, 'How can you lose?'" Hall said.

That attraction to the Westside is the result of many factors, most of them having to do with money. Area residents are typically more affluent that those in other parts of Los Angeles, and therefore more likely to buy the products newspaper advertisers are looking to sell. This is especially true of real estate, with such companies providing the bulk of many papers' advertising base.

"The demographics are dynamite," said Stephen Laxineta, chairman and CEO of National Media, Inc., which has published a broadsheet-format weekly, the Westsider, since July. The Westsider, distributed free directly to homes in Brentwood, Westwood, Cheviot Hills, Rancho Park and Beverlywood, has a circulation of 40,000. National Media, under the Los Angeles Independent Newspapers chain, also publishes the Hollywood Independent and the West Hollywood Independent.

But whether the market can sustain all these new publications is a key question.

"I certainly don't think they'll all survive," said one industry source, who asked not to be identified. Newspapers with the best chance of making it are the ones that can combine a good editorial package with a strong sales staff, the source said.

Herb Chase, founder of the now-defunct Independent Journal News and whose Santa Monica Good Life was merged into the Los Angeles Reader last year, agreed that the market cannot hold all the newspapers it has now. (Chase also has an ownership interest in Valley Printing, which prints the L.A. Weekly and Hall's Westwood/Brentwood/Santa Monica news chain.)

The wave of new newspapers "is more of a coincidence than anything else," Chase said, noting there are no signs of an advertising upswing in the market.

Another newcomer, the Beverly Hills News, a weekly tabloid started earlier this year with 35,000 free circulation, is hoping to carve out its own niche in the complex Westside market by focusing solely on Beverly Hills. But that niche already has an established rival, the Beverly Hills Courier, a tabloid with a circulation of 50,000.

To make matters more confusing, some Westwood/Century City neighborhoods that receive the two Beverly Hills papers also get the Westsider, the Westwood News and Copley's West L.A. Independent.

Coast Media's L.A. Weekend, which is inserted in the chain's 75,000 weekly neighborhood newspapers, also has a bulk drop distribution of 20,000 that includes Westwood and Century City.

That is simply too many newspapers for too small of an area, said Chase.

"And there are already newspapers in the area who have been trying to put their hands into those advertisers' pockets," Chase said. "A great number of weeklies could disappear without being missed by anybody."