E W Scripps

The Los Angeles Times Real Estate section won for best large-circulation newspaper real estate or home section at the 52nd annual journalism competition sponsored by the National Assn. of Real Estate Editors. Contest winners were announced last week at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel during the association's annual real estate journalism conference. The competition drew entries from 225 journalists across the United States, which competed in 15 categories.

E. W. Scripps Co., the privately held parent corporation of the Scripps Howard Media Group, announced Tuesday that it plans to sell some of its limited-voting common stock to the public. The newspaper publishing company said that the number of shares to be sold had not been determined but that control of the company would remain with the founding Scripps family. It said the required paper work was expected to be filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission next month. Lawrence A.

E.W. Scripps Co., owner of the Home & Garden Television network, forged a distribution agreement with AOL Time Warner Inc. that will boost the reach of its cable channels by 12 million homes over two years. Terms of the agreement weren't disclosed. Home & Garden and Scripps' Food Network will be distributed in an additional 2 million households by the end of 2003 through Time Warner Cable, the No. 2 U.S. cable company.

New York-based Cityfeet.com is the most recent firm to make Los Angeles-area commercial real estate listings available through the Internet. Cityfeet.com focuses on smaller office and retail tenants, who can search the listings for free via the Web. Property owners and brokers pay a fee to have their property included in the listings. The firm has hired away Paul Anderson from rival Propertyfirst.com in Alhambra to head its Los Angeles operation.

Ventura County Star President and Publisher John P. Wilcox is leaving the newspaper for a job as executive vice president and general manager of the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn. Star Editor Timothy J. Gallagher, 43, will succeed Wilcox as president of the Star and will continue to work as the paper's editor. Both the Star and the Commercial Appeal are owned by E.W. Scripps Co., which runs 19 daily newspapers, nine television stations and other media enterprises.

A slow-burning electrical fire was blamed for the blaze that killed the granddaughter of publishing magnate Edward Wyllis Scripps and her husband as they slept in their turn-of-the century home. Ellen Scripps Davis, 84, was pulled from the bedroom of her burning home early Sunday by employees who lived at the Scripps Ranch, just north of San Diego. She was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

Charles E. Scripps, 87, longtime chairman of the E.W. Scripps media firm, died Saturday of natural causes near his home in Naples, Fla., the company said. He was board chairman from 1953 until 1994, presiding over the company's growth as a newspaper publisher along with its entry into broadcast television, cable TV systems and networks, and the Internet.