After 34 Years Of Local Ownership, Yorks Sell Malibu Times
Written by 991KBU on October 29, 2021
The Malibu Times has been sold to a young couple that owns a magazine and a clutch of small newspapers on the Central Coast.
Its new owners, a husband-and-wife publishing team from Paso Robles, take over ownership from Arnold York and Karen Portugal York. The newspaper’s longtime offices on Las Flores Canyon Road have been vacated.
The new owners, Hayley Mattson and Nicholas “Nic” Mattson, publish Paso Robles Magazine and two small papers: the Paso Robles Press and the Atascadero News. Their company’s slogan is “Good News. Real News. Hometown News.”
The Mattsons made the announcement Friday on their company’s Twitter feed. The Malibu Times was founded in 1946 and “not missed an edition since is founding, and is not about to,” wrote Karen Portugal York last year. Like all newspapers, TMT is “dependent on the revenues generated from the advertising of our local small businesses,” she wrote, and the Covid closures “created a cash flow crisis.”
The Yorks moved to Malibu in 1976, as they raised a family here. Arnold York was a trial lawyer, Karen Portugal York a public relations agent. They purchased the newspaper in 1987.
In an interview two years ago, Arnold York said “I always read newspapers and was a news junkie. I had no idea what to do. “I was having dinner with a broker friend who told me that The Malibu Times was up for sale. Karen said, ‘Let’s buy it and we’ll sell it in a year.’ That was 29 years ago. “I love the newspaper business. The best part is when the week is over, you push everything off your desk and start a new one for next week.”
The Yorks have sold the Malibu Times building, on Las Flores Road, to a real estate developer. Part of the old structure was the original structure holding the GLobe-6 Malibu phone exchange, a building that was dragged up to its current perch by Reeves Templeton, TMT’s founder, in the 1940s. It is not salvageable.
The sale is to conclude Oct. 31, a source said.
The other weekly in Malibu, the Malibu Surfside News, has apparently ceased operations. It website is now 404, and its lone freelance editor, Scott Steepleton, is now writing for The Acorn newspapers in the Conejo Valley. KBUU and the Malibu Times share news gathering resources, and arrangement that will continue.
