Weeklys

What Weeklys does

Weeklys, operating as Metro Publishing Inc., is a privately held California local media group founded in 1985 and headquartered in San Jose. It owns and operates a portfolio of 15+ regional and community newspapers and magazines serving the greater San Francisco Bay Area, spanning the North Bay, South Bay, East Bay, Peninsula, Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz, and Sacramento regions. Titles include the Pacific Sun, North Bay Bohemian, Mountain View Voice, Palo Alto Weekly, Good Times Santa Cruz, East Bay Express, Salinas Valley Tribune, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pajaronian. The company is led by CEO Dan Pulcrano.

The company's underlying technology is a local digital media publishing platform that combines editorial websites, 24 online community calendars, the eBlast+ email marketing system, social media distribution, SEO optimization, and the proprietary CalTix event ticketing platform. CalTix integrates with Stripe for payments and the Meta Conversions API for advertising attribution, allowing the company to capture transaction-fee revenue on top of audience reach metrics of 125,000 newsletter subscribers, 200,000+ social media followers, and 2.6 million in email marketing reach. Recent product launches include the Cannabis Chronicle, a vertical publication serving the legal cannabis market in Northern California.

Revenue is generated through multiple streams: digital and print advertising, print and digital subscriptions, transaction fees from CalTix event ticketing, legal advertising placements (a regulated revenue line tied to municipal and county public notices), and sponsored content. The customer base comprises Bay Area local communities as readers, local event organizers as ticketing customers, and local businesses and SMB advertisers as the primary commercial constituency. The business model is fundamentally a roll-up of community newspapers operating on shared back-office, ad sales, and digital infrastructure to achieve portfolio-level economies.

Name

Weeklys

Legal name

Metro Publishing Inc.

Website

https://weeklys.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

1985

Operating status

Operating

Short description

Weeklys (Metro Publishing Inc.) is a privately held San Jose-based local media group operating 15+ community newspapers and magazines across the San Francisco Bay Area, generating revenue from advertising, subscriptions, legal notices, sponsored content, and its CalTix event ticketing platform for local SMB advertisers and event organizers.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Regional Media Publishing

NAICS

Newspaper Publishers (513110), Periodical Publishers (51312), Newspaper, Periodical, Book, and Directory Publishers (5131)

SIC

Newspapers: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2711), Periodicals: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2721), Miscellaneous Publishing (2741)

akta.pro primary industry

Local & Regional Newspapers (Print & Digital) (MPAJADAB)

akta.pro secondary industry

Newsletter Publishing Platforms (MPACAIAA)

Keywords

• Local newspaper publishing
• Regional media publishing
• Digital advertising services
• Event ticketing platform
• Email marketing services

Headquarters

HQ city

San Jose

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Technology or R&D, Supply Chain, Others

Revenue model

1. Digital Advertising: Website advertising, mobile advertising, targeted eBlasts, and digital marketing services across Bay Area markets
2. Print Advertising: Display and classified advertising in regional weekly newspapers
3. Subscriptions: Print and digital subscriptions for local newspapers including Gilroy Dispatch, Hollister Free Lance, Morgan Hill Times, and others
4. CalTix Event Ticketing: Ticketing platform for events with fee generation that converts to advertising credits for event organizers
5. Legal Advertising: Fictitious Business Names, legal notices, name changes, trustee sales, and other court-ordered publications
6. Sponsored Content: Native advertising with journalistic approach, up to 1,000 words with social media boosts

Pricing tiers

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Weeklys is a California local media group publishing a portfolio of 15+ regional and community weekly newspapers, magazines, and websites across the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The company monetizes through print and digital advertising, subscriptions, sponsored content, CalTix event ticketing with integrated calendar promotion, and legal advertising services such as fictitious business name statements and trustee sales notices.

Product overview

Weeklys is a California local media group operating a portfolio of print and digital publications across the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The company offers a platform of 15+ regional and community weekly newspapers, magazines, and websites, complemented by digital marketing services including CalTix event ticketing, eBlast+ email marketing, social media marketing, Local SEO, sponsored content, and legal advertising. The product portfolio includes regional alt-weeklies (Metro Silicon Valley, Good Times Santa Cruz, North Bay Bohemian, Pacific Sun, East Bay Express), community newspapers (Gilroy Dispatch, Morgan Hill Times, Hollister Free Lance, The Pajaronian, Press Banner, Salinas Valley Tribune, King City Rustler, Tri-City Voice, Healdsburg Tribune), specialty magazines (East Bay Magazine, Bay Area Parent), and web properties (San Jose Inside, Cannabis Chronicle). The company generates revenue through print and digital advertising, subscriptions, ticket fees, sponsored content, and legal advertising services.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• CalTix: Event ticketing platform from Weeklys that offers online ticketing with calendar integration and free advertising benefits for event producers.
• eBlast+

Products and services

• Metro Silicon Valley Weekly alternative newspaper serving Silicon Valley with coverage of technology, arts, entertainment, dining and local culture.
• Good Times Santa Cruz Santa Cruz County's leading free weekly serving the community for over 40 years, covering events, news analysis, performing and visual arts, food culture, and local business.
• North Bay Bohemian Free weekly publication serving Marin, Sonoma and Napa wine country regions, covering culture, dining, wine, music and local events.
• Pacific Sun America's longest-published alternative weekly serving Marin County with coverage of lifestyle, culture, dining and community news.
• East Bay Express Weekly alternative newspaper serving Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda with investigative journalism, arts coverage and local news.
• Gilroy Dispatch Weekly newspaper serving Gilroy, founded in 1868, one of the oldest continuously operated businesses in the region.
• Morgan Hill Times Weekly newspaper serving Morgan Hill, founded in 1894, the oldest continuously operated business in Morgan Hill.
• Hollister Free Lance

Quantifiable outcome

• Good Times received California Newspaper Publishers Association's First Place General Excellence award, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration2 records

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves10 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Gannett: Gannett is the largest US newspaper chain (USA TODAY Network) with hundreds of local titles across the country; it represents the national-scale benchmark for the local print+digital advertising business Weeklys operates at the regional level.
• Hearst (San Francisco Chronicle): Hearst owns the San Francisco Chronicle and a portfolio of California local media assets, directly competing with Weeklys for Bay Area advertising dollars, subscribers, and event-driven audiences across overlapping Northern California geographies.
• Bay Area News Group / Mercury News: Bay Area News Group operates the San Jose Mercury News and East Bay Times, the dominant daily local newspapers in Weeklys' core markets; it is a substantially larger incumbent with overlapping geographic coverage, providing both audience competition and acquisition target adjacency.
• Tribune Publishing: Tribune Publishing operates major metropolitan daily newspapers including the New York Daily News and the Baltimore Sun; it is a larger public-comparable incumbent that competes for national/local SMB advertising dollars and exemplifies the scale-side peer set for a multi-title regional publisher.
• LA Times (Los Angeles Times): The LA Times is a major California regional daily with significant digital subscription and advertising revenue; it is a same-state peer operating a similar print+digital subscription and display advertising model at greater scale and serves as a Southern California analogue for Weeklys' Northern California operation.

Emerging players

• Patch Media: Patch is a digital-only hyperlocal news network operating thousands of community sites across the US, including many Bay Area zip codes; it competes with Weeklys' titles for local news audiences and SMB advertisers using a lower-cost, purely digital model.

Others

• Nextdoor Holdings: Nextdoor operates a neighborhood-level social network used by Bay Area residents for local information and event promotion; while not a news publisher, it competes with Weeklys' digital properties and CalTix for local audiences, event organizers, and SMB advertisers seeking hyperlocal reach.

Direct peers

• Boone Newspapers: Boone Newspapers is a family-owned operator of community and daily local newspapers in the US Southeast and Midwest, sharing Weeklys' playbook of acquiring, retaining, and operating heritage local titles with central digital services and shared ad sales.
• Embarcadero Media: Embarcadero Media publishes a network of local community newspapers across the Mid-Peninsula and Silicon Valley (Palo Alto Online, Mountain View Voice, The Almanac, Pleasanton Weekly), running a directly analogous multi-title weekly newspaper, digital advertising, and email-marketing model in the same Bay Area market as Weeklys.
• Adams Publishing Group: Adams Publishing Group is a privately held community newspaper company that owns and operates weekly and daily local newspapers across multiple US regions, mirroring Weeklys' strategy of acquiring and operating small-market local titles with centralized digital services.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Facebookfacebook.com/metronews
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/weeklys

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles4 records

Subsidiaries16 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Weeklys