Monterey County Weekly was launched in 1988 by Bradley Zeve, its founding editor & publisher, and current CEO.

Zeve served as the Free Speech chair for the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (2004-2019), is the former president of the Sea Studios Foundation and co-founded The Sun newspaper in Santa Cruz, CA.

Monterey County NOW, a daily e-newsletter to residents of the community was established in 2020, and reaches nearly 50,000 households.

[6] The Weekly is also headquartered in the first commercial office building designed by one of the innovators of postmodernism Charles Moore (architect) who received the AIA Gold Medal in 1991.

[8] Monterey County Weekly was awarded General Excellence for large circulation weekly newspapers by the California Newspaper Publishers Association (2012, runner-up 2013) [9] and the 2015 Free Speech & Open Government award from the First Amendment Coalition.