In the media world, businessman Paul Huntsman is perhaps best known for saving The Salt Lake Tribune. He bought the struggling paper in 2016 and converted it into a nonprofit three years later.
Now he’s starting another paper in Coronado, California, a resort city that sits on a peninsula across the bay from San Diego. Called The Coronado News, the weekly launched at the end of January and is delivered for free to 9,500 of the city’s residents and businesses. The News’ reporting is also free to read on its website.
Huntsman said he was inspired to start a paper in Coronado after buying a house there last spring. His family has a long history in the city — his father, billionaire industrialist Jon M. Huntsman Sr., was stationed there while serving in the Navy — and Paul Huntsman grew up vacationing there. But the transition from visitor to part-time resident gave Huntsman a new perspective.
“As a resident, you begin to see things a little differently,” Huntsman said. “You look at the newspapers a little differently. You interact with the shop owners and explore the issues on the island a little differently.”
He noticed an “ongoing environmental crisis” involving raw sewage flowing from the Tijuana River up to the beaches of Coronado Island. Huntsman searched for more information but could only find “superficial reporting.” He realized that there was a need for deeper, higher-quality news, and he started reaching out to journalists he knew.
One of the journalists Huntsman contacted was Craig Harris, an investigative reporter at The Arizona Republic, who had done a — “kind of critical,” as Harris puts it — story about him for USA Today.
Harris said he had always dreamed of running a paper in Coronado, which he and his family have visited regularly since 2000. While he had some “trepidation” at leaving an established paper to run a startup, he knew that Huntsman had the resources to make The Coronado News successful. So when USA Today started offering buyouts last year, Harris took one and joined the News as its editor-in-chief.
The News’ print edition runs 20 to 24 pages and includes a mix of investigative stories and general news from the city, local schools and the Navy, which has a base on the island, Harris said. He has found that the print edition targets an audience that appeals to advertisers, which is how the News makes most of its money.
“I don’t think print is dead,” Harris said. “A different audience reads our print product than reads our online product. I will get people who will call me … and say, ‘Oh, gosh, I loved that story.’ It ran two weeks online — they never saw it.”
The paper also runs more lighthearted features typical of a community weekly, like “Coronado Love Letter.”
“We want to bring a real newspaper to this community. We want to bring them news when it happens, investigative stories — we want to be watchdogs,” Harris said. “And we also want to have fun. We want to have ‘Pet of the Week,’ ‘Student of the Week.’ We want to celebrate the Girl Scouts and fundraisers.”
In addition to Huntsman and Harris, the paper has two full-time journalists. It also has six interns, who are students at nearby Point Loma Nazarene University and San Diego State University. The News will add a third full-time reporter in June, Harris said.
Coronado already has two other news outlets, including the 111-year-old weekly Coronado Eagle & Journal and digital outlet Coronado Times, which are both locally owned. Huntsman said that trying to establish a new paper in a community “that takes great pride in itself” has been a challenge — but one that he’s embraced.
“It all boils down to demonstrating great quality in your reporting and showing the value, really, of what outstanding, high-quality journalism can be,” Huntsman said.
Throughout February and March, The Coronado News published a five–part investigative series on the sewage problem stemming from the Tijuana River. Their investigation found that longstanding infrastructural issues in Tijuana, Mexico, have led to tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage spilling into the Pacific Ocean. The pollution has held dire financial and public health impacts in Tijuana and Coronado.
“I have lived in San Diego for the past almost five years now, and I hadn’t heard about this,” said Madeline Yang, one of the reporters who worked on the series. “This has been going on for so long, but there hasn’t been a lot of coverage about it. So it was really, really eye-opening for me to go to Tijuana with the team and just learn about it as we were writing about it.”
In the wake of the News’ reporting, city council members at Imperial Beach, which lies just south of Coronado, held a special meeting to address the sewage problem. The city of Coronado also created a committee to work with nearby cities and federal officials on the issue.
The News also gained a big advertiser thanks to its reporting, Harris said. An Imperial Beach resident was impressed by its coverage of the pollution crisis and decided to buy several full-page ads.
Unlike The Salt Lake Tribune, The Coronado News is a for-profit venture. Huntsman, who is the sole proprietor of the outlet, declined to share how much he has invested into the News but noted that it is a “tiny, tiny, tiny fraction” of what he has invested previously in journalism.
Harris said the goal is to be profitable by early next year. He also has bold plans for the News’ journalism.
“I’d like to win a Pulitzer Prize, and I would like to win some major journalistic awards for the coverage that we’re doing for our sewage investigation,” Harris said. “Winning awards isn’t the tell-all of how you do as a newspaper, but it puts you on the map, and it brings you legitimacy. So I would hope that our work would bring some recognition.”
