Your Community Newspaper
Thank you for choosing the Acorn Newspapers, the leader in local news and feature story coverage for almost 50 years. In print, with five publications reaching 340,000 readers, online with new stories daily about key events in the community, and in social media with more than 100,000 followers on multiple platforms, the Acorn has you covered.
Our mission is to provide fair, in-depth reporting in the nine cities we cover from western Los Angeles to eastern Ventura County. In Acorn country, local voices matter. This is your community newspaper.
Meet the Publishers
Conejo Valley residents Jim and Lisa Rule purchased the Agoura, Calabasas, Westlake Village Acorn in 1996 and turned it into one of the few thriving, independent publications in the country. The couple subsequently added papers in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Moorpark and Camarillo, and also launched Beyond the Acorn news and feature magazine.
The business couple was named the California Press Foundation’s Justus F. Craemer Newspaper Executive of the Year in 2017, and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal’s Top 200 Most Influential Leaders in The Valley in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Under their leadership, Acorn publications have won multiple editorial and photography awards from the California News Publishers Association. The Rule’s vision for the future remains strong.
Meet our editors
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- John Loesing is managing editor of the Acorn Newspapers, and in his more than 20 years with the company he has helped oversee growth in coverage from one newspaper to five. Loesing is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and a two-time winner in the California Newspapers Publishers Association Awards for feature and editorial writing. He has twice won a SCAN NATOA (States of California and Nevada Chapter of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors) Government Broadcast Awards.
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- Kyle Jorrey is the editor of the Thousand Oaks Acorn and head of social media for the Acorn Newspapers. He was previously editor of the Simi Valley Acorn and Moorpark Acorn, and before that, the Acorn’s sports editor. A graduate of Pepperdine University, he’s won California Newspaper Publishers Association Awards for breaking news, coverage of local government, editorial comment and writing.
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- Sylvie Belmond is the editor of the Simi Valley Acorn. She studied business administration and languages in Switzerland and worked in the travel and administrative fields before transitioning to journalism in the late 1990s. Sylvie joined the Acorn Newspapers team in 2004 as a reporter and was promoted to editor in 2017.
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- Becca Whitnall, a former Thousand Oaks reporter, is the editor of both the Camarillo and Moorpark editions of the Acorn. A UC Berkeley alumna, Becca uses her English lit education to write pun-laden and alliterative headlines and her peace and conflict studies education to quell arguments in Facebook comments. With the Acorn, she’s won California Newspaper Publishers Association first-place awards for breaking news, coverage of local government, in-depth reporting and land use reporting.
