Guide
Overview
California has more daily newspapers than any other state, led by the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Sacramento Bee, the Mercury News in San Jose, the Orange County Register, the Fresno Bee, the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, the San Bernardino Sun, the Bakersfield Californian and the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa. Most of the Southern California and Bay Area dailies belong to two chains, and CalMatters covers state government online for all of them.
California newspapers carry the legal notices the state requires for trustee sales, fictitious business names, probate and name changes, they publish obituaries for 58 counties, and their archives hold court coverage back to the 1850s.
Official sources on this page were checked on September 25, 2026.
Guide
California Newspapers
Find local and statewide newspaper publications for California. Access news, sports, classified, entertainment, and archived articles.
Guide
Major California newspapers and what they cover
The Los Angeles Times covers the state's largest county, the Los Angeles Superior Court, the federal courts and state politics from Sacramento. The Chronicle covers San Francisco and the Bay Area, the Union-Tribune covers San Diego and the border, and the Sacramento Bee covers the Capitol and state agencies. Regional dailies such as the Modesto Bee, the Stockton Record, the Ventura County Star, the Santa Barbara News-Press, the Monterey Herald, the Redding Record Searchlight and the Desert Sun in Palm Springs cover their superior courts, boards of supervisors and sheriffs, and hundreds of weeklies cover the cities in between.
Guide
Historic California newspapers online
The California Digital Newspaper Collection at the University of California, Riverside is one of the largest free newspaper archives in the country, with millions of pages from 1846 onward, and California titles also appear in Chronicling America. The California State Library in Sacramento holds newspaper microfilm from every county, and the Los Angeles Public Library and San Francisco Public Library provide free access to the Times and Chronicle archives with a library card. The Bancroft Library at Berkeley holds early Bay Area titles.
Guide
Legal notices, public notices and obituaries in California
California law requires trustee sale notices, fictitious business name statements, notices of petition to administer estates, name changes, summons by publication and government hearings to run in an adjudicated newspaper of general circulation in the county, and the California News Publishers Association runs a statewide public notice search. Obituaries run in every daily and most weeklies, and the California State Library's California Information File indexes older obituaries and news mentions. Court coverage in the big dailies is searchable by name and pairs with the superior court case indexes that most counties post online.
Guide
Browse Newspapers by State
Straight answers
California Newspaper Directory, questions
What is the largest newspaper in California?
The Los Angeles Times, followed by the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Sacramento Bee and the Mercury News in San Jose.
Where can I read old California newspapers free?
The California Digital Newspaper Collection at UC Riverside has millions of free pages from 1846 onward, and Chronicling America adds more historic titles.
Where do I find a California fictitious business name or trustee sale notice?
In the adjudicated newspaper for the county, collected in the California News Publishers Association's statewide public notice search.