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The Top 10 California Daily Newspapers by Circulation

The genesis of newspapers in the Golden State dates back to 1846, with the establishment of The Californian in Monterey (its first edition was fully bilingual in English and Spanish, and announced the beginning of the Mexican-American War). Since then California has built up one of the largest newspaper rosters in the country.

Updated October 2019

  • 1. Los Angeles Times
    The LA Times is one of the country’s biggest newspapers and is published by Los Angeles Times Communications LLC.
  • 2. The Mercury News
    The Mercury News is based in San Jose and mostly serves the Silicon Valley region, and was at one point the country’s fifth largest newspaper by circulation.
  • 3. San Francisco Chronicle
    The San Francisco Chronicle serves the San Francisco Bay Area of northern California, and was founded in 1865.
  • 4. San Francisco Examiner
    The Examiner was founded in 1863 and is now owned by Canadian media group Black Press.
  • 5. The San Diego Union-Tribune
    This newspaper is the product of a merger between The San Diego Union and San Diego Evening Tribune in 1992.
  • 6. Sacramento Bee
    The Bee was founded in 1857 and is distributed throughout the upper Sacramento Valley, with a large circulation area covering more than 12,000 square miles.
  • 7. Orange County Register
    The Register was founded in 1905. It is published in Anaheim, by Digital First Media.
  • 8. Fresno Bee
    The Fresno Bee serves the city of Fresno along with surrounding communities in California’s San Joaquin Valley, and is published by The McClatchy Co.
  • 9. L.A. Daily News
    The Los Angeles Daily News serves the San Fernando Valley area in Los Angeles, and is published by Digital First Media.
  • 10. The Press-Enterprise
    The Press-Enterprise is published by Digital First Media and serves the Inland Empire area of Southern California.

Newspaper circulations and rankings are determined by Fullintel’s media intelligence analysts in combination with data supplied by LexisNexis.

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