Oceanside Blade press runs again

Former Oceanside publisher Tom Missett, 75, couldn’t stay away from print journalism. After being out of the daily newspaper business for 19 years, he’s brought back a familiar North County newspaper: the Oceanside Blade issued its first edition late last month.

The bimonthly 20-page tabloid delivers “Local Cutting Edge News” to 30,000 homes in the city. The paper is also available at stores, restaurants, hotels, and the library.

“Three months before a big election is the hottest time for people reading newspapers,” said Missett in a September 16 interview.

With two issues under his belt, “It's beyond my wildest expectations," he said. "I’m getting thank-you notes: ‘We finally know what's going on in Oceanside.'... The longer they’ve been here, the more they appreciate what we are doing.”

Around the city, locals have mixed reactions on the new publication; everything from “Finally, a North County voice” to it being only “a political hit piece.”

“If I wanted to do a vendetta hit piece," said Missett, "I could do that in 4 pages. I don’t need 20 pages.”

While the paper has good coverage on community news, local sports, and businesses, it is clear where Missett’s politics lie. Missett is opposed to councilman Jack Feller: a September 13 editorial headline read: “O’side, let’s take out the trash . . . Jack Feller’s.

A city hall insider suggested that the impetus for starting the paper was because in 2015, Feller ticked off Missett over a proposed electronic billboard.

As mentioned in the Reader’s November 27, 1985, cover story, the Missett brothers used the press to influence city officials — so much influence that Missett’s brother (and former editor) Bill Missett was once blamed by a city-council candidate for causing her husband’s heart attack, based on what the paper published about her.

In the September 13 issue, the Blade also published the taxpayer-funded earnings of councilpersons and top city officials.

Missett is no stranger to the newspaper biz and city politics. In 1967, at age 26, he purchased the daily Oceanside Blade-Tribune, which had community news ancestry dating back to the 1920s. In 1981 he purchased the San Dieguito Citizen, a weekly that served Del Mar to Encinitas, and rebranded it into one North County coastal newspaper, The Blade-Citizen.

In 1995, Missett merged with Escondido’s Times-Advocate to become one North County paper; he also had The Californian, a daily that covered southwestern Riverside County. Since retiring in 1997, the company sold several times, eventually ending up in in the hands of the U-T, then owned by Doug Manchester.

Shortly after the U-T’s purchase, the separate North County Times edition, as well as The Californian, were eliminated. Recently, the U-T closed its last editorial and sales offices in North County.

Missett’s brother Bill, 77, who served as editor for the Blade Tribune/North County Times incarnations, will serve as a copy editor from his home in Mexico. Longtime Reader music reporter Ken Leighton serves as editor.