The Tribune (San Luis Obispo)

The Tribune is a daily broadsheet newspaper and news website that covers San Luis Obispo County, California.

It was created in 1939 from a combination of three newspapers founded between 1869 and 1905, and was later acquired by the E. W. Scripps Company. Scripps traded the paper, along with The Monterey County Herald, to Knight Ridder in 1997, in exchange for the Boulder Daily Camera.[2] The McClatchy Company took over the paper on June 27, 2006, when it acquired Knight Ridder, formerly the United States' second-largest chain of daily newspapers.

The Tribune owns one weekly newspaper, The Cambrian, located in Cambria, California. A second weekly newspaper, The Sun Bulletin of Morro Bay, no longer publishes. According to McClatchy, the newspaper's daily circulation is 35,080 (2015), rising to 45,250 on Sundays (unknown date). Total readership is estimated at 90,800 on weekdays and 102,800 on Sunday (unknown date).

In February 2015, the paper's publisher, Bruce Ray, announced his resignation; Fresno Bee president and publisher Tom Cullinan was named publisher for the paper.[3] In late 2015, along with many other McClatchy newspapers, The Tribune went through a redesign, adopting a companywide design style for both print and online platforms. Ken Riddick was named president and publisher of The Tribune in October 2017.[4] The Tribune's longtime Executive Editor Sandra Duerr retired in December 2017.

On February 13, 2020, the paper announced that its owner, McClatchy Company, had declared bankruptcy. In an article by Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy claimed that bankruptcy was necessary in order to "...shed costs of print legacy and speed shift to digital." Court filings revealed a plan that would turn over control to hedge fund management company, Chatham Asset Management. The family held company would have to give up its shares in McClatchy, which according to a press release, operates 31 newspapers from Miami to Sacramento California. No information was given about potential layoffs at that time.