It’s 4:30 a.m. in Riverside County. Flowers lightly scent the Southern California air. The day will dawn clear, bright blue. The first commuters are roaring down the highways. This is their life: two hours to work, two hours home -- the price they pay for an affordable house and a neighborhood free of fear.

They live in Corona, Temecula, Hemet, Banning, Riverside and other communities inland from the coastal Los Angeles-to-San Diego sprawl. The communities have little in common. There are pockets of affluence, poverty, education, illiteracy, Los Angeles orientation, Orange County orientation, San Diego orientation -- all the possibilities.

They all are Southern Californians, though, and have the commuting lifestyle in common. And an impressive and growing proportion of them have reading The Press-Enterprise in common.

Press-Enterprise managers believe they know their market and what it wants: a no-frills, information-rich newspaper, news about the reader’s own community, pricing that respects Southern California’s economic ups and downs, delivery and editing that respect a hectic lifestyle, and reliability -- old-fashioned, get-it-right-the-first-time reliability in an unreliable world.

"This newspaper is not about flair," says Business Editor Andy McCue. "Here, the watchwords are accurate, fair, thorough. Those are the qualities that affect penetration."

Good teamwork, high productivity, a do-it-now culture and an exceptional commitment to zoning let The Press-Enterprise deliver what its readers want.

GIVING READERS NEWS THAT AFFECTS THEM

The Press-Enterprise zones into eight areas daily, with three additional micro zones on some days. The whole newspaper is fair game for zoning replates. The entertainment page can change to reflect different movie theater ads. Even the editorial page has been zoned to change letters to the editor.

The newsroom cranks out 125 to 150 local items a day, filling 60 to 80 local pages. The newsroom’s 198 full-time and 50 part-time employees are heavily weighted toward creating and editing local content. Supervisors make up less than 15 percent of the staff.

Recently retired Managing Editor Mel Opotowsky says the newspaper’s former long-time owner and editor, Tim Hays, almost always approved requests for new reporting positions but was hard to sell on new positions that wouldn’t lead directly to more local content. The current editor and publisher, Marcia McQuern, working since last year for A.H. Belo Corp., is firmly entrenched in this feet-on-the-street bias.

When Press-Enterprise editors hire, they are looking for fast, accurate reporters who listen to readers, can write a story for a zone, and who can then turn it around quickly with a broader focus for regional play. They have packed five Riverside newsrooms and 12 bureaus with such reporters.

A few years ago, columnist David Broder gave a lecture in Riverside and suggested that American political reporters regain their bearings by knocking on doors and asking readers about their concerns. Soon after, Press-Enterprise reporters and assignment editors were applying his advice to all coverage areas -- "Broderizing," they call it.

They learned, Opotowsky says, that readers "don’t care what the councilman called the mayor -- they don’t really care." The lesson taught the staff that doing a more thoughtful job on quality of life issues like child safety and land use would be far more valuable to readers.

Delivery time is critical in a commuter market. Circulation and production departments rebuilt their operations to guarantee delivery as early as 4:30 a.m. on routes where residents have the longest commutes and no later than 6 a.m. on other routes. Every route has a delivery deadline that’s appropriate to the neighborhood.

The newspaper’s three 9-unit Headliners run on staggered deadlines starting at 11:25 p.m. The pre-press page flow and zoning timetables that feed the presses are works of planning art, matched by the complex delivery plan that moves bundles to the right places at the right times. So much could go wrong in such an operation. So little does.

THE IMPORTANCE OF GETTING IT RIGHT

Personal responsibility throughout the organization helps The Press-Enterprise be known as "the newspaper that gets it right" in print, in delivery, and in billing. "It doesn’t matter how good you are," publisher McQuern says, "if you aren’t accurate." And on time. And reliable.

This military precision helps McQuern be a militant marketer. She has led The Press-Enterprise into community after community, expanding the franchise in a growing county that cuts a 55-mile-wide swath across some 175 miles of Southern California. Small community dailies in the area have been stopped cold, leaving The Press-Enterprise to reap the market’s population growth. In its latest, most audacious move, The Press-Enterprise moved north into San Bernardino County, directly into a competitor’s face. Invasions of The Press-Enterprise market by metros in the area have a history of failure.

BUILDING ON A REPUTATION

The management team calls its long continuity a major competitive advantage. "We know the market well," Opotowsky says, unlike competitors’ high turnover managements.

The team credits Marcia McQuern’s warrior spirit. She has instilled do- it-now energy throughout the organization, making it possible for fresh ideas to surface, be considered and be quickly carried out.

This organizational vigor carries into circulation frequency and pricing decisions. The Press-Enterprise has resisted offering Sunday-only or weekend delivery packages, making it more difficult for readers to work other newspapers into their lives. There is risk in forcing customer decisions this way, but The Press-Enterprise offers such high-quality service and local journalism, it can afford the risk.

The newspaper discounts conservatively, preferring to give price breaks in exchange for long-term subscriptions -- another way of building market share and reader loyalty.

Of the six circulation leaders studied in this project, The Press-Enterprise seems the most attuned to the readership power of advertising. For instance, Classified Ad Manager Sue Barry boldly restructured her liner pricing from ads with an average cost of $30 to three-line ads at $11 -- but only one item allowed per ad.

Instead of costing money, this move made money -- greatly increasing classified ad count and assuring that every item advertised is for sale, not just an advertiser’s afterthought. She has created such a strong grassroots marketplace in the classified section that auto dealers don’t complain about private parties getting a much better deal on photo ads than dealers do. They pay two to four times more than private parties, Barry says, but they know how well-read the section is, and they know "you must be in the paper when the reader is there," regardless of price.

Perhaps the car dealers, famous everywhere as difficult advertising customers, are saying with their dollars that nobody can second-guess a newspaper that truly understands its readers.

SIDEBAR: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE

For newspapers that want to understand their readers, The Press-Enterprise offers these basic lessons -- learned from readership surveys and knocking on doors and listening about what matters to readers.

• Early, consistent delivery matters.

• Micro-local news matters.

• Covering critical issues like schools, growth, land use and quality of life matters. Covering "just politics" doesn’t matter.

• Newcomers need directions, explanations and maps.

• Young people who are buying houses and starting families have many of the same needs as middle-aged people who are paying for houses and putting kids through college.

• Hispanics who read English, read English newspapers.

• Private party classified ads attract readers to the newspaper.

• Readers don’t care if you cut back in most departments. They care if you cut the news they want or the customer service they expect.