The San Diego Union-Tribune is moving its printing from the Los Angeles Times plant in L.A. to the Southern California News Group Press Enterprise Facility in Riverside.
The change starts Sunday for Monday’s paper.
The new printing press location will result in an obvious change for most readers. The U-T had printed four news sections for Monday and Thursday; it had printed five news sections for Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Riverside press has room for up to four sections to be printed at one time.
To adjust, the Business pages will move into the A section Monday through Saturday. Business will remain a stand-alone section on Sundays.
Also, puzzles, games, horoscopes, Dear Abby and comics will move to the back of the Local B section Monday through Saturday.
Sunday comics, which are preprinted, will remain a stand-alone section. Puzzles, games, horoscopes and Dear Abby will continue appearing Sundays in The Hub marketing section.
Health (Tuesday), Food (Wednesday), Night&Day (Friday), Home+Garden (Saturday), and Arts+Culture (Sunday) will continue as stand-alone sections.
The press change to Riverside had been planned before the U-T’s sale in July. But it had been scheduled to start in January.
The Los Angeles Times announced in November 2022 that it was closing its 26-acre plant on Olympic Boulevard. The lease was set to expire at the end of 2023. The Times and the U-T, which had been sister papers both owned by Los Angeles billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, had planned to move printing to the Southern California News Group Press Enterprise Facility in Riverside.
But Soon-Shiong sold the U-T in July to an of MediaNews Group.
MediaNews Group is owned by Alden Global Capital, which owns around 200 publications across the country.
MediaNews Group is the parent company of the Southern California News Group. Its papers include the U-T, the Orange County , Los Angeles Daily News and Riverside Press-Enterprise.
The U-T’s sale moved up the paper’s date to start printing in Riverside. The L.A. Times will begin printing there in January, as it had planned.
The Riverside plant prints a multitude of publications, including the Orange County , the Los Angeles Daily News, the Riverside Press-Enterprise and community newspapers. And now the U-T as well.
Some background on printing the U-T
Beginning in 1973, the paper was printed in Mission Valley at its three-story press next to the main five-story building that housed the newsroom, advertising and other operations.
Pre-Great Recession and pre-widespread use of the Internet, the paper printed multiple editions. The first news deadlines were for editions that would be delivered to areas on the edges of the county. Deadlines for other editions were progressively later as deliveries moved closer to central San Diego and to the press.
I working the metro desk late one night in 2003 when I received a phone call from a resident who asked if the paper knew about a fire burning in the backcountry near Ramona. I called the Sheriff’s Department and learned people were being evacuated from San Diego Country Estates. It was around 11:30 p.m. Despite the hour, there was still one more edition to go, so I was able to get in print a small item on the fire. It turned out to be the beginnings of the Cedar fire.
The paper was printed in Mission Valley until 2015. Then-owner Douglas Manchester sold the paper in May that year to Tribune Publishing Co., which also owned the L.A. Times back then. But the Mission Valley property was not part of the sale. In June, local printing stopped, and the massive press was dismantled. Printing moved to the L.A. Times plant, where the paper was printed until now.
