City News Service, Inc. is a regional news service covering

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban ...

. City News Service clients include local and regional newspapers, broadcasters and websites.

History

The company was founded in 1928 by Marvin Willard and Welland Gordon, with the intention of providing both national

wire service A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and radio and television broadcasters. A news agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire, ...

s and local news outlets with local stories, including coverage of

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywoo ...

and city government. Florabelle Muir, an LA

gossip columnist A gossip columnist is someone who writes a gossip column in a newspaper or magazine, especially a gossip magazine. Gossip columns are material written in a light, informal style, which relates the gossip columnist's opinions about the personal l ...

, purchased the service from its founder(s) in the early 1940s. In the early 1950s,

Fletcher Bowron Fletcher Bowron (August 13, 1887 – September 11, 1968) was an American lawyer, judge, and politician. He was the 35th mayor of Los Angeles, California, from September 26, 1938, until June 30, 1953. He was at the time the city's longest-serving ...

, the former

mayor of Los Angeles The mayor of the City of Los Angeles is the official head and chief executive officer of Los Angeles. The officeholder is elected for a four-year term and is limited to serving no more than two terms. (Under the Constitution of California, all ...

and Joe Quinn, the United Press bureau chief in Los Angeles, who later served as deputy mayor of Los Angeles, purchased the company. Bowron tired of the news business and decided to run for an open Superior Court judge seat, the same position he held before running for mayor of Los Angeles with a promise to clean up the city's notoriously corrupt police department. After again assuming the bench, Bowron sold his interest in City News to Joe Quinn. After Quinn's death in 1979, his widow, Grace Quinn, assumed ownership of the company but soon decided that practicing law, not journalism, was her true passion. Her eldest son
Tom Quinn
assumed control of City News in 1980. Quinn, a former broadcast journalist in Chicago, Los Angeles and Sacramento, managed Jerry Brown's successful campaign for governor of California in 1974 and served as Chairman of the state Air Resources Board from 1975 to 1979. He appointed a close associate, Douglas Faigin, as CNS editor and together they expanded the business by opening new bureaus in Orange County, San Diego and Riverside County. They also doubled the number of clients to include television stations, networks, cable news outlets, daily and weekly newspapers, reality TV programs, government agencies and news websites. Tom Quinn retired as CNS chairman in 2013 and Faigin assumed that position. When Faigin retired in 2021, Quinn became non-executive chairman and Lori Streifler, who had been CNS' top editor, became president. Marty Sauerzoph is now editor and Kevin Kenney is city editor. Quinn, who now lives in Reno, NV, continues as primary owner but spends most of his time on his extensive business interests in Nevada, including serving as president of Americom Broadcasting and Reno Media Group, the dominant broadcaster in Northern Nevada and Lake Tahoe.

References

External links

Company web site
* Mass media in California News agencies based in the United States {{US-media-company-stub