Dallas Firm Paying Several Million Dollars for ‘California Business’ : L.A.-Based Magazine Will Be Sold

California Business, a monthly magazine owned by outspoken Los Angeles businessman Martin Stone, is being sold to Dallas-based Commerce Publishing for “several million dollars,” the Texas company said Tuesday.

C. Don Baker, chairman of Commerce Publishing, said no immediate changes in the size of California Business’ 30-member staff are planned.

E. Jack Martin, president of Commerce Publishing, which owns 13 business publications in Texas, Colorado, Florida and Arizona, including the company’s flagship 48,500-circulation Texas Business magazine, said he plans to shift the editorial focus of California Business to make it “more people-oriented.”

California Business, which has a paid circulation of 70,000, would be the state’s second major regional magazine sold to a Texas publisher in recent years.

Austin-based Mediatex Communications Corp., the publisher of Texas Monthly, acquired New West magazine from Australian publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch in 1980. It sold the magazine, which it renamed California, to a New York publisher in August, 1983. But unlike Mediatex, which carefully tried to forge a kind of cultural homogeneity between Northern and Southern California to attract more readers to California, the new owners of California Business indicated Tuesday that they plan to continue to promote the interests of California Business’ mostly wealthy readers by speaking out on important political and business issues.

New Editorial Plans

“Running a regional business magazine is unlike running a national one,” Martin said. “At Texas Business magazine we instituted many things that helped the state come together with business leaders and discuss the problems the state was facing,” including hosting forums with prominent political speakers ranging from former U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick to former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

Neither Stone nor Hershel D. Sinay, publisher of California Business, could be reached at their offices for comment Tuesday.

But Martin’s editorial plans for California Business promise to be noticeably different from those of the outspoken Stone, who often used the magazine to publish his political and economic views.

In a prominently featured monthly publisher’s commentary, Stone would regularly roast political liberals. Yet, just as often, he would speak out fervently on more personal topics.

In this month’s issue, for example, Stone--who owns the Phoenix Giants baseball team of the Pacific Coast League--wrote a column saying that “baseball is sick due to outrageous salary demands and owners’ unwillingness to face a long strike.”

Though Martin said he plans to solicit contributions from other columnists to replace Stone’s commentary, California Business, founded in 1965 as a biweekly tabloid, is not solely a vehicle for Stone’s views. It runs features on California-based companies, state economic news and personal financial planning.

That editorial mix has apparently pleased advertisers who purchase more than 60 pages of advertising in each issue. That’s helped transform California Business from a struggling biweekly newspaper into an increasingly more profitable enterprise, according to Commerce’s Baker.