Northern California publisher Weeklys Media Group has acquired the Los Altos Town Crier, a weekly newspaper that has served the California communities of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View since 1947, company CEO Dan Pulcrano announced Oct. 9, 2026.
The Town Crier will be Weeklys’ 16th newspaper and its first in the Los Altos/Los Altos Hills market. The paper is mailed to households in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills and reaches neighborhoods in Mountain View, with a weekly circulation of about 15,000.
Weeklys’ other newspapers in the Silicon Valley area include the Metro Silicon Valley, Los Gatan, Tri-City Voice (Fremont-Newark-Union City), Morgan Hill Times and Press Banner (Scotts Valley and San Lorenzo Valley).
The Town Crier was founded in 1947 as a four-page shopper by Dave MacKenzie and syndicated cartoonist Warren Goodrich, who created the San Francisco Chronicle’s derby-wearing theater-going icon, The Little Man. MacKenzie operated Foothill Printing and Publishing with his business partner Bill Norton and sold it to Suburban Newspaper Publishers Inc., owned by Mort Levine and Los Altos Hills resident Larry Dawson, in 1972.
The Meredith Corporation of Des Moines, Iowa, acquired Levine’s group in 1979 and sold it in 1988 to Donnelly Newspapers. The Tribune Co. of Chicago purchased the group and closed down the Town Crier, along with the Peninsula Times-Tribune, in 1993.
Paul and Liz Nyberg purchased the publication within 24 hours of the shutdown and ran it for 26 years. In December 2019, Dennis Young and three employees bought the paper.
“Dennis Young has demonstrated heroic efforts to keep community news vital for the past seven years, which included the pandemic and its recovery. News organizations and other local businesses were of course affected, but Dennis built a team to maintain the Town Crier’s deep connection to the community,” Pulcrano said.
Young and his wife, Maria Crowder, will serve as consultants to the Town Crier as it enters a new era. “We are grateful to the subscribers and advertisers who supported us and the dedicated staff members we were privileged to work with. Local journalism is necessary for a community to stay informed and perform well,” Young said.
Based in Santa Clara County, Weeklys traces its origins to 1985 with the launch of its flagship free regional publication, Metro. The group of companies remains independent and is operated by its founder. Its publications have won numerous awards for reporting and design, including the California Journalism Awards’ top prize, General Excellence.
The publishing group has a history of technical innovation, launching the pioneering online service LiveWire in 1993 and the Boulevards city guide network in 1995. Last year it launched PublishMyNotice.com, a service to make it easy for customers to publish fictitious business name statements and other types of public notices from mobile phones.
Home to many Silicon Valley executives, Los Altos features a historic downtown village centered on Main Street, where the Town Crier maintains offices, as well as Foothill College. Los Altos was recently ranked as one of California’s wealthiest communities.
