Buy it, and they will come

Weeks after three key employees of the Long Beach Press-Telegram left that publication, the Long Beach Post, an online news outlet in business since 2007, announced Monday that those individuals will be joining its staff, now that the Post is under new ownership and significantly increasing its number of writers.
Amid drastic cutbacks at the Press-Telegram under Southern California News Group– an umbrella organization of local newspapers that includes the long-time daily paper of record for Long Beach– the three staff members resigned with the intention of creating a new digital publication that would serve the Long Beach area. As reported in the Signal Tribune on May 31, Pacific6, an investment company helmed by Long Beach resident John Molina, would fund the publication.
The three Press-Telegram employees who quit are: Tim Grobaty, a columnist with the newspaper since 1976; Jeremiah Dobruck, a public-safety and breaking-news reporter; and Melissa Evans, the city editor.
On Monday, the Post published a “letter to readers” in which it announced its new owner and expansion of staff. Penned by new publisher David Sommers, the letter explained the steps leading up to the recent developments and referred reverently to the original vision of the late Shaun Lumachi, who started the Post with now Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia, and the former’s emphasis on not accepting the status quo and pushing those around him to have the courage to try something new.
For the last six years, Cindy Allen, a local small-business owner who acquired the publication after Lumachi’s death in 2011, has owned and operated the Post.
“Under new ownership, the Long Beach Post will be quadrupling its editorial and business staff to employ the largest newsroom in the city,” Sommers wrote. “You’ll recognize some of our additions: Tim Grobaty, who’s been writing columns about Long Beach for 42 years, and Brian Addison, a former editor at the Post and an award-winning writer based in Long Beach. We are also honored that the entire existing Post team– Dennis Dean, Stephanie Rivera, Asia Morris and Jason Ruiz– has agreed to stay with the publication to continue its excellent work and join us on this journey.”
Sommers added that more staff additions will be announced in the coming months.
The newly formed local company Pacific Community Media, as a subsidiary of Pacific6 Enterprises, a Long Beach-based community investment and development firm, will now operate the Post.
Sommers said Pacific6 is made up of six local partners who are investing millions of dollars into the community.
“Though the partners of Pacific6 have invested in this new venture and will guide financial sustainability and strategic vision for Pacific Community Media, I want to make clear: they will not have any say in news and editorial decisions or coverage,” Sommers wrote. “We are grateful for their support and investment in expanding local news, and all of us have agreed to an ethical framework that will provide the necessary separation to maintain the public’s trust. We will cover Pacific6’s investments in the city as we would any other person or business.”
Addison, who is rejoining the Post as a columnist focusing on urban development, lifestyle and other topics, had served as an editor of the publication before founding the blog Longbeachize.
In an emailed response to the Signal Tribune this week, Addison wrote that he is “humbled and privileged to be a part of such a spectacular team.”
He explained that his association with the newly organized media outlet has been in development for a while.
“My involvement has been something in the works since Pacific Community Media was in its infancy stage and, as with everything I’ve done in terms of writing and journalism, the main goal is to simply bring quality, thorough stories from the people of Long Beach to the rest of Long Beach,” Addison wrote. “With that in mind, our team agreed that merging both my own publication, Longbeachize, and the Long Beach Post, would prove fruitful in many manners. I can return Longbeachize toward its roots in handling livability issues like housing and homelessness while some of my other foci that I’ve brought to the publication– food, history, culture– can be used on the Post.”
He added that Longbeachize will act as somewhat of an “alternative” arm of the Post, providing more “contemporaneous forms of reporting” as well as serving as a platform for developing writers.
In a phone interview Tuesday morning, Grobaty explained the changes in ownership and staff came to be.
“Back in February, I guess it was, we were all sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves because of our ownership– Alden Global Capital– which was just totally destroying the paper. We were down to me, my city editor and two reporters at that point,” Grobaty said. “And Melissa Evans, the city editor, said, ‘Can you ask John Molina to buy the paper?’ just kind of jokingly, and John called about two hours later and asked me what it’ll take to buy the Press-Telegram. So, we were overjoyed, but Alden wouldn’t sell the Press-Telegram. So, we were underjoyed after that.”
Grobaty said he and Molina lamented the fact that Long Beach no longer had its own newspaper that focused primarily on the city, rather than sharing stories from other publications in the region through the newspaper group.
“So, he said, ‘Let’s either buy the Post or start from scratch,’” Grobaty said. “So, after a couple of months, he bought the Post, and he asked me to come up with some people to bring aboard, and these are the people I came up with.”
Those three individuals are: Evans, the former Press-Telegram city editor who will now serve as managing editor; Jeremiah Dobruck, who will be the breaking-news editor; and Thomas Cordova, who will be visuals editor.
Sommers, their new publisher, worked as a television news producer for NBC affiliates before serving as director of Countywide Communications for Los Angeles County.
Staying on at the Post will be: Dennis Dean, the director of operations for the Post, where he has worked for seven years; Stephanie Rivera, who covers breaking news and general assignment for the Post, where she has worked for three years; Asia Morris, who covers arts, food, entertainment and culture and has been with the publication for the last four years; and Jason Ruiz, who has worked there for six years and covers local government.
“Nothing is more important to the Long Beach Post than our integrity– our legitimacy comes from our readers and from the community we serve,” Sommers wrote in a press release this week. “We look forward to providing the community of Long Beach with the rigorous news coverage it deserves.”