San Mateo County Times Staff Report

SAN MATEO — Six San Mateo County weekly newspapers owned by Alameda Newspaper Group are ceasing publication Saturday so their resources can be used to expand and improve the group’s daily San Mateo County Times, Times Publisher Dan Cruey said Thursday.

He characterized the move as an opportunity to improve the Times’ news and advertising content.

Closing down are the Coastside Chronicle, Millbrae Recorder-Progress, Daly City Recorder, San Bruno Herald, Times Weekend and the South San Francisco Enterprise-Journal.

Although some of the weeklies have been around for decades, they have been little more than advertising vehicles for many years, Cruey said, and lacked the editorial content that local readers need and want.

“By taking the weeklies’ resources and putting them into the Times, we will be creating a much more localized and powerful daily newspaper — which readers have told us they want,” Cruey said. No jobs are being lost due to the closure.

By closing the weeklies, a recently launched ANG/ADVO advertising partnership program will benefit county residents by moving additional advertising material into the Times itself, Cruey said.

He noted that almost all of the content in the weeklies had been already printed in The Times. The only original content, Carolyn Livengood’s report, will be available to readers through the Times, he said.

The Times is the oldest continually published daily newspaper in the county.

ANG is part of Media News Group, a nationwide chain of newspapers and other media outlets owned by Dean Singleton.