However, Lesher began expanding by purchasing weekly newspapers in neighboring communities, as well as two eastern Contra Costa daily papers, the Antioch Ledger and the Pittsburg Post-Dispatch.

On April 26, 2006, it was announced that MediaNews Group (now Digital First Media), then headed by William Dean Singleton, would purchase four of the "orphan 12", including the Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News, for $1 billion.

While extending until that date a preliminary injunction preventing collaboration of local distribution and national advertising sales by the two media conglomerates, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on December 19, 2006, expressed doubt over the legality of the purchase.

[3] On April 25, 2007, days before the trial was scheduled to begin, the parties reached a settlement in which MediaNews Group preserved its acquisitions.

[5] On April 5, 2016, the three remaining Times editions were merged along with the company's other newspaper in the East Bay, the Oakland Tribune, which it had owned since 1992.