The Californian

About The Californian

The Californian, formally The Salinas Californian, is a newspaper published in Salinas, California, serving the Salinas Valley and Monterey County on the state's Central Coast. Founded in 1871, it is among the oldest continuously published newspapers in California, with a history intertwined with the region's agricultural heritage and its most famous literary son, John Steinbeck. It has chronicled the transformation of the "Salad Bowl of the World" from a 19th-century farming town into a diverse modern city.

The paper is owned by USA Today Co. and operates its digital platform at thecalifornian.com. In recent years it has become a stark symbol of the crisis in local news, with its newsroom reduced to a single reporter and its historic headquarters left vacant, even as it continues to publish as part of the USA Today network.

History

The paper's origins lie in the Salinas Valley Standard, founded in 1869 by J. Selwyn Brittain as the first paper in Salinas and the first in Monterey County outside the city of Monterey. Around 1871, Melville Byerly moved his printing plant to town and started a successor to the Standard called the Salinas City Weekly Index, the direct ancestor of today's paper. After Byerly's death in 1876, the paper passed to his brother-in-law, county school superintendent Samuel M. Shearer.

In October 1876, William J. Hill relaunched the paper as the Salinas Daily Index and published it for 33 years. In 1909, a company headed by former mayor D.A. Madeira acquired the Index from Hill. In 1919, Madeira sold the Index to Fred Weybret, who in 1928 purchased the Salinas Morning Journal and merged it with the Index to form the Salinas Index-Journal. In 1932, Weybret sold the paper to E.L. Sherman of Modesto. In 1936, Merritt C. Speidel and Graham M. Dean bought the Salinas Index-Journal from Sherman and the Salinas Daily Post from Frank Cornell, and in 1942, amid the economic pressures of World War II, the two papers were merged to form The Salinas Californian.

Ownership

In 1977, Speidel Newspapers was sold and merged into the Gannett Company, bringing the Californian into what would become the largest newspaper chain in America. The paper has remained under Gannett ownership through the company's 2019 merger with GateHouse Media and its 2025 rebranding as USA Today Co. It operates as part of the USA Today network of local news outlets.

The paper's corporate history mirrors that of many mid-size American dailies: decades of stable local ownership giving way to chain consolidation, followed by successive rounds of cost-cutting as the newspaper business model collapsed. The Californian's experience under Gannett has been among the most extreme examples of newsroom reduction in the industry.

Coverage Area

The Californian serves Salinas and the Salinas Valley, along with the broader Monterey County region, an area defined by some of the most productive farmland in the world. Its coverage includes the agricultural communities of the valley, the city of Salinas itself, and the surrounding towns whose economies revolve around farming, food processing, and farm labor.

The paper reported circulation of around 7,000 when it reduced its print schedule in 2015. An older chamber of commerce listing described it as reaching 48,600 readers daily, illustrating the scale of its decline. Its readership includes growers, farmworkers, and the valley's diverse Latino community, which constitutes a majority of the local population.

Editorial Focus

The paper's editorial focus centers on local news with an emphasis on agriculture, farm labor, local government, education, and public safety in the Salinas Valley. Water, labor rights, housing for farmworkers, and the economics of specialty crop farming are signature subjects, reflecting the region's identity as the Salad Bowl of the World. The paper has historically covered the struggles and contributions of the valley's farmworker communities.

The paper also covers high school sports, community events, and the cultural life of the region, including the California Rodeo Salinas. Its Spanish-language weekly El Sol served Monterey County's Latino readers for 47 years before being shut down, and its Off 68 weekly served communities along California State Route 68. A young John Steinbeck published some of his earliest work in the paper's predecessor, the Salinas Index, before 1920, a literary connection the paper has long treasured.

Notable Coverage

Over its long history, the Californian documented the labor struggles that defined the Salinas Valley, including the strikes and organizing efforts of farmworkers, the bracero program era, and the rise of the United Farm Workers movement in nearby Delano. Its agricultural reporting chronicled the valley's evolution from sugar beets and grain to lettuce, strawberries, and wine grapes.

The paper's own decline has itself become a nationally noted story, cited by press critics and media scholars as an extreme case of corporate disinvestment in local news. Reports on the paper's boarded-up former headquarters and its reduction to a single reporter have been used to illustrate the hollowing-out of American local journalism, making the Californian as famous for its diminishment as for its journalism.

Digital Presence

The paper's website, thecalifornian.com, maintains a 24-hour digital presence, though in recent years much of its content has been sourced from other Gannett newspapers rather than original local reporting. The site's online edition was launched in 2000, and digital subscribers receive full access behind a paywall, with e-editions, mobile apps, and email newsletters extending its reach.

As of December 2022, the newspaper had no reporters on staff, with all remaining content sourced from other Gannett papers, notably the Record Searchlight in Redding, some 300 miles to the north. One reporter was hired in August 2024, a small step toward rebuilding local capacity. The paper's digital future depends on whether its corporate owner will invest in restoring the local journalism that gives the site its reason to exist.

Community Role

For 150 years, the Californian was the Salinas Valley's paper of record, and its former headquarters at 123 W. Alisal Street, which it occupied from 1949 until 2017, was a landmark of downtown Salinas. The now boarded-up Art Deco building, with weeds growing in its parking lot and the remnants of the paper's sign still etched into its sides, has become a melancholy symbol of local news decline, documented in photo essays on the state of Monterey County journalism.

In its prime, the paper was deeply woven into valley life: covering the rodeo, the harvest seasons, high school sports, and the civic affairs of a growing agricultural city. Its Spanish-language El Sol publication acknowledged and served the Latino majority, and its special publications, from the Welcome to Salinas Guide to the Reader's Choice Awards, celebrated community life.

Challenges

The Californian's challenges are the most acute of any paper in this survey. Reduced in 2015 to a three-day print schedule of Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, it has never published a Sunday edition. Its newsroom was eliminated entirely, its historic building abandoned, and its operations outsourced to distant sister papers. In mid-2017, the paper moved from its longtime headquarters to an office in a shopping center parking lot on South Main Street, which has since also been vacated, with the paper now listing a Northridge Mall address for mailing purposes.

Rebuilding local journalism from this nadir would require investment that the paper's corporate owner has shown little inclination to make. The valley's information needs, from farmworker housing to water policy to local government accountability, go largely unmet by a paper that once covered them deeply. Competition from the Monterey County Weekly and other outlets only partially fills the gap.

Future Outlook

The Californian's future is uncertain. Its 150-year history, its Steinbeck connection, and its status as the historic voice of the Salad Bowl of the World give it a legacy worth preserving, and the hiring of a reporter in 2024 suggests at least a minimal commitment to local journalism continues. But the paper's trajectory under corporate ownership points toward continued diminishment rather than renewal.

The broader question the Californian poses is whether the commercial newspaper model can sustain local journalism in working-class agricultural communities at all, or whether nonprofit and alternative models must take its place. For the Salinas Valley, the answer will determine whether one of California's oldest newspapers survives its second 150 years or becomes a digital ghost, a brand without a newsroom.