The Commuter Times, a weekly distributed at ferry terminals in Larkspur and Sausalito as well as to news racks near bus lines in Marin County, has been sold to the former executive of USA Today and the Marin IJ.
According to the IJ, Doreen Burgin of Novato, who had been running the paper after her husband Al Burgin died three years ago, sold the paper to Fred Conner of Petaluma. Conner served as field operations manager for USA Today, director of operations for the Marin Independent Journal, and briefly as publisher of the Marinscope community newspapers. He’s now co-owner of Marin Sun Printing Inc. in San Rafael, which has been printing the Times.
The paper was founded in 1992 by Burgin and her husband, Albert “Al” Burgin, who had a long career at the San Francisco Examiner before founding the Commuter Times and the San Francisco Real Estate Journals.
The Commuter Times stopped printing in August, but Conner resumed publishing this week.
The paper features transportation-related articles, local news, a crossword puzzle, games, movie and local theater reviews and a club-and-pubs feature.
Conner said the paper’s low overhead makes its advertising rates affordable to small businesses on tight budgets. The paper has no permanent employees; all of the work is done by independent contractors.