Founders of The Malibu Times
The Malibu Times newspaper was founded in 1946 by Reeves and Eileen Templeman.
The couple worked on every issue of the paper together for 20 years before Eileen passed away in July 1965.
“The adequate was never enough for her,” her obituary, published in The Malibu Times, described. “Whatever task she undertook was a challenge to achieve perfection and to accomplish this, she ignored all rules of health and comfort and drove herself without mercy.”
Born in London and educated in Belgium, Eileen came to the United States as WWI was sweeping across Europe. Passionate about art and theater, she made her way to Hollywood and, in 1937, met Reeves, then a young newspaperman working for the Los Angeles Record.
At the beginning, the two created each paper together — everything from writing and photography to operating the presses.
“Going without sleep, subsisting on hamburgers and luke-warm coffee, she never left her job until she felt it was done,” the obituary described.
At the time of her death, Reeves was grief-stricken.
“With Eileen went half of The Malibu Times,” he said. “But her spirit is still a part of the paper and of Malibu, and it is my hope that both the paper and the community will achieve the things she desired for both.”
In 1966, Reeves remarried and Reeves and Reta Templeman together continued the mission of the paper.
With Reeves as publisher and Reta as a writer and editor, the two owned the paper for another two decades. Reta had a reputation for her joie de vivre.
“Reta was wonderful and always up,” Arnold G. York, current Malibu Times publisher, said in her 2004 obituary. “She knew how to have a good time better than anybody I ever knew.”
In 1987, the newspaper was sold to Arnold and Karen York, though Reeves continued on with his popular column “Along the Malibu.”
Since ’87, the Yorks have continued the mission first stated by Reeves in the May 2, 1946 edition of The Malibu Times: “We shall strive always to be friendly and helpful to all people, but in our friendliness and helpfulness, we shall consider it also our responsibility to protect our people against the infiltration of swindlers and charlatans and fly-by-nights whose purpose is to defraud and cheat the unsuspecting through cleverly-laid schemes.”
