TRACKING THE PULSE; DAILY NEWS HAS RECORDED, EXPERIENCED VALLEY'S CHANGES.Byline: Steve Carney Daily News Staff Writer As the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. has grown and changed phenomenally during this century, so has the Daily News - one of the Valley's oldest businesses. The Van Nuys Call published its first issue Oct. 13, 1911. Six weeks later Frank Keefer, a newspaper reporter from Pittsburgh who had covered the Spanish-American War Spanish-American War, 1898, brief conflict between Spain and the United States arising out of Spanish policies in Cuba. It was, to a large degree, brought about by the efforts of U.S. expansionists. a decade earlier, bought the paper from its founder, E.R. Elkins. Keefer had come to the Valley in 1905 and saw the need for a newspaper to serve the towns that were about to spring out of its rich soil. He renamed the Call the Van Nuys News and published his first issue on Nov. 24, 1911. The paper started as a weekly, coming out on Fridays. In early issues, advertisers pushed ``Mexican Mustang Liniment liniment, liquid preparation rubbed on skin, used to relieve muscular aches and pains. It contains some substance that when rubbed over the affected part causes mild irritation and often brings more blood to the painful part. for sore eyes,'' offered ``large restricted lots in Van Nuys townsite A townsite is a legal subdivision of land that is platted for the development of a town or community. In the historical development of the United States, Canada, and other former British colonial nations, the filing of a townsite plat was often the first legal act in the - $350 and up,'' and announced ``Ice! Ice! Delivered on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.'' The paper was a noisy booster for its home community, even within its news pages. ``Van Nuys the Wonder Town - The Result of an Ideal in Mind of a Master Developer,'' blared one headline above an article about the town's history, which at that point spanned 14 months. Another shouted, ``Van Nuys - The Coming Metropolis of the San Fernando Valley.'' The paper's focus was chiefly local, as the front-page headlines of April 19, 1912, attest: ``Large Acreage in Beets,'' ``Bitten by a Mad Dog - Three Persons Now Receiving Pasteur Treatment Pasteur treatment n. A treatment for infection by the rabies virus in which a series of increasingly strong inoculations with attenuated virus is given to stimulate antibody production during the incubation period of the disease. ,'' ``Our Beautiful Sherman Way to Be the Boulevard Par Excellence of America.'' Of course, some outside news was too big to ignore: ``Titanic Sinks to Watery Grave Watery Grave is the third historical mystery novel about Sir John Fielding by Bruce Alexander. Plot summary When the captain of a British warship falls overboard and drowns, a Naval court martial is convened to investigate a charge of murder. .'' Many articles from those days are familiar today - Van Nuys and other towns in the Valley wrestled with the notion of whether to be part of Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. , and city officials writing the new Los Angeles City Charter tried to balance Valley communities' desire for autonomy with their need for city services, namely water. The Van Nuys News also reported big stories of the day such as the coming of electricity to the area in 1912 with the construction of a Southern California Edison Southern California Edison (or SCE Corp), the largest subsidiary of Edison International (NYSE: EIX), is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. It provides 11 million people with electricity. substation; the first traffic fatality on Van Nuys Boulevard, when a car hit a motorcycle head-on the night of July 23, 1912; and a report about keeping local poultry houses clean - ``those absolutely free of lice and mites are the happy exception and not the general rule.'' The News started publishing twice a week in 1922, and in 1932 Keefer sold his interest to William Colfax Markham and his sons, Maurice and Ralph. They joined with one of Keefer's earlier partners, Walter Mendenhall, who then became editor. His son, Ferdinand Mendenhall, was editor himself after his father. In the 1940s, to set itself apart from the competition, the paper started printing its front page on green paper, and in 1953 changed its name to the Valley News and Green Sheet. The paper came out three days a week in 1954, and four days in 1959. In the 1960s, the News and Green Sheet expanded its coverage to the Conejo, Simi and Santa Clarita valleys. In 1973 the Markham and Mendenhall families sold the paper for $25 million to the Tribune Co., publisher of the Chicago Tribune, which began transforming the News and Green Sheet from a free community paper to a paid suburban daily. The Tribune Co. dropped the green front page in 1976, started printing seven days a week in 1979 and in 1981 stopped free distribution and changed the name to the Daily News. Then in 1985, Jack Kent Cooke Jack Kent Cooke (25 October, 1912 – 6 April, 1997) was a Canadian-American entrepreneur who became one of the most widely-known executives in North American professional sports. , the owner of the Washington Redskins and New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of City's Chrysler Building, paid the Tribune Co. $176 million for the Daily News. Two years later, he moved the operation to its current facility in Woodland Hills. After Cooke died in 1997, his estate sold the paper to MediaNews Group, headed by President and Chief Executive Officer William Dean Singleton William Dean Singleton is the chairman of the board of directors of the Associated Press, on which he has sat since 1999. He is also the founder, vice chairman and chief executive officer of MediaNews Group, the fourth-largest newspaper company in the United States in terms of . The sale price was not disclosed. Today, the Daily News is the nation's 55th-largest newspaper, with a circulation of 201,107 daily and 215,107 on Sundays. In addition, anyone in the world with Internet access can now read its coverage instantly, any time, by accessing the paper's World Wide Web site: www.dailynews.com. Sorry, though - no more ads for Mexican Mustang Liniment, or Valley lots for $350. CAPTION(S): 2 photos PHOTO (1 -- 2) As the Van Nuys News, the Valley's newspaper operated on Sylvan sylvan emanating from or pertaining to woods. See also sylvatic. Street, seen here in 1911. At right, the newspaper from April 19, 1912. |
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