Weekly Papers Changing Hands : Knight-Ridder’s West Orange Publishing Co. May Close
The Knight-Ridder Corp. reportedly is closing down its West Orange Publishing Co. subsidiary, publisher of four weekly newspapers in Orange County and one in Los Angeles County.
Officials at both Ingersoll Publications and Scripps-Howard Co. said Tuesday that between them they are purchasing three of West Orange’s weeklies, the Huntington Beach Independent and Buena Park News in Orange County and the La Mirada Lamplighter in Los Angeles County.
While West Orange officials could not be reached for comment, several present and former employees of the weekly publisher said the largest paper in the chain, the Orange County News, will cease operations later this month. The status of the fifth paper, the Anaheim Independent, could not be learned Tuesday.
West Orange, which claims total circulation of 183,500 for the five papers, has been struggling financially for several years.
The most recent figures published by the group show that circulation in Orange County has dropped by almost 15,000 since 1982, when publisher Bernard Ridder acknowledged in a brief interview that West Orange was experiencing financial hardships that forced it to make weeklies out of what then were its semiweekly newspapers in Orange County.
Terms Not Disclosed
Ridder could not be reached Tuesday and neither Ingersoll nor Scripps-Howard on Tuesday would disclose the terms of their purchase agreements with West Orange Publishing. The sales of the three papers are expected to close Jan. 1.
Ingersoll Publications, owner of the 34,000-circulation Daily Pilot in Costa Mesa, will buy the Huntington Beach Independent, a 53,000-circulation weekly that also has a Fountain Valley edition. The purchase will put Ingersoll papers in all of the coastal communities from Huntington Beach to Laguna Beach.
Scripps-Howard, which publishes the News Tribune in Fullerton, will purchase the Buena Park News and the La Mirada Lamplighter, which circulates in southeastern Los Angeles County. The two papers, with a combined circulation of 38,000, will give Scripps-Howard a total of 22 weeklies in southern Los Angeles and northern Orange counties.
Robert Hively, publisher of Scripps-Howard’s weekly group, said the publishing company’s latest acquisitions bring its total circulation in the region to 400,000. Last month, the Cincinnati-based chain purchased eight weeklies in southern Los Angeles County from the Hearst Corp.
Both Hively and Karen Wittmer, publisher of the Daily Pilot, said their purchases allow their companies to pursue long-standing plans to expand their Orange County operations.
“The whole idea is to develop a contiguous circulation so we can show advertisers a saturated market,” Hively said.
According to Hively, all five of West Orange’s papers, including the Orange County News and the Anaheim Independent, were put up for sale. Neither Hively nor Wittmer knew whether the remaining two papers have been sold or would continue publishing. But several former and current employees at the Orange County News said they have been notified that the paper will be closed down later this month. The Orange County News circulates as two papers, one serving Anaheim and the other the cities of Garden Grove, Stanton and Los Alamitos.
Investment Planned
Wittmer said Ingersoll plans to make a “substantial investment” in the Huntington Beach paper. She said the paper now has one full-time and several part-time editorial employees. Plans call for the hiring of an additional four news staffers.
Wittmer said the paper would keep its Huntington Beach office for editorial operations but would transfer its business staff to the Daily Pilot’s offices in Costa Mesa.
Hively said Scripps-Howard had no plans to change the operations of the La Mirada and Buena Park papers.
The sale of the three Knight-Ridder papers is the latest move in a chain of media activity in Orange County that began in 1982 when the Orange County Register launched a free weekly newspaper that began pulling advertising from some other weeklies and smaller dailies. A year later, Ingersoll purchased the Daily Pilot from Times Mirror Co., and the Fullerton News Tribune--which had been purchased by Scripps-Howard a decade earlier--dropped its Saturday edition, laid off nearly 25% of its staff and dropped four cities from what had been a seven-city circulation area.
Daily Schedule Dropped
The Fullerton paper struggled on for nearly a year more before dropping its five-days-a-week publishing schedule and becoming a weekly last December.
And earlier this year, Baker Communications of Beverly Hills purchased four Orange County weeklies published by Coast Media News Group Inc. of Costa Mesa. Those papers, Irvine Today, the Costa Mesa News, the Newport Ensign and the Orange County Entertainer, had a combined circulation of 80,000.
