The note below, written by editor Traci Hukill and executive editor Dan Pulcrano, ran in the May 6-13 issue of Santa Cruz Weekly.
In the last 15 years, Santa Cruz has experienced a renaissance from a traumatized, earthquake-hobbled community and recaptured its identity. It seemed like a good time for this newspaper to do the same. We were tired of being confused with the bus company. And it was time to cut the ties to the mother ship.
Metro Santa Cruz was born as a spinoff of a paper in the mostly landlocked county next door. That publication had been started by Santa Cruzans who had ventured over the hill and wanted to come home. The company’s style and heritage was always more Santa Cruz than Silicon Valley; it had been conceived and incorporated in Santa Cruz, owned by shareholders who lived in or had roots in Santa Cruz. Nonetheless, the metropolitan flavor of the name never fit well with the character of Santa Cruz, so it was time to shed it.
It may be a bold move to Wednesday-punch our readers with a new name without notice. Some astute followers may have suspected something was up when we added the word “weekly” to our logo a few issues ago and then last week the word “Metro” started sliding off the page. We hope the energy and thinking that inspired this rebranding will provide a fertile field for Santa Cruz’s artists and writers.
At a transformative moment in the publishing industry, we’ve adopted a decidedly newspaper-y name to express our optimism about weekly print. From a business standpoint, the last two years have been our best ones, which is counterintuitive. We appreciate the strong support we’ve gotten from the community. We are committed to quality and not debt-laden from buyouts like most big publishers these days. As one of the Bay Area’s last owner-operated publishing companies, we’re as local as it gets. Our staff and owners live, work and play here, which keeps us connected.
The handsome, classic look developed in-house by a design team led by Kara Brown is part of a broader reinvention that will allow us to deliver information to readers throughout the week. Santa Cruz Weekly offers a fresh take on local news, an expanded letters and opinion page and more smart coverage of arts, music and culture. Santa Cruz characters and local color get their moment in a new section called Locally, while Epicure offers recommendations on fine food and wine. You’ll find us on the web at SantaCruz.com, on Facebook at SantaCruzFB.com, on Twitter as santacruzweekly. Our goal is to deliver Santa Cruz County’s best suite of local information and marketing services to Santa Cruz residents, visitors and businesses.
Please drop us an email or comment on your favorite web service to let us know how we’re doing.
Traci Hukill, editor
Dan Pulcrano, executive editor
