Pomona, Ontario Papers to Merge as Inland Daily

Donrey Media Group is shifting its Los Angeles-area newspaper focus east to the Inland Empire with the merger of the Pomona Progress Bulletin and Ontario Daily Report, to begin publishing April 30 as the new Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

The merger completes a consolidation that has long been under way, a newspaper spokesman said.

The combined newspaper will be headquartered in Ontario, with the Pomona office being reduced to a news and advertising bureau.

Dave Caffoe, who is general manager of the Daily Report and will become general manager of the Daily Bulletin, said a number of jobs will be moved from Pomona to Ontario. The two newspapers employ 380 people. Caffoe said the staff will be increased, but he does not yet know how many jobs will be added.

The Daily Report and the Progress Bulletin have been owned since 1967 by Donrey, whose flagship newspaper is the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Donrey owns 56 daily newspapers, a dozen outdoor advertising companies, five cable television companies and a television station.

The two papers have long been moving toward consolidation and adopted identical typography and design formats 18 months ago. They have been sharing editorial staffs and publishing joint editions on Saturdays and Sundays.

Caffoe said the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin will publish separate Los Angeles and San Bernardino County editions mornings and afternoons. The Daily Report has been published in the morning and the Progress Bulletin in the afternoon.

By adopting a regional name, the combined newspaper will lose some identity that the Progress Bulletin has held with the city of Pomona and that the Daily Report has held with Ontario. Caffoe said Belden Associates, a national readership polling company, interviewed residents of the area and found that the name of the newspaper did not matter to them.

“Readers don’t care what it is called as long as what is in it is good,” Caffoe said.

Pomona Mayor Donna Smith said: “We’ve known for a long time they were going to merge.” She said some residents will regret the loss of a newspaper based in Pomona, but that the Progress Bulletin had been “becoming more of a valley newspaper than a Pomona newspaper” anyway.

The Progress Bulletin is in its 106th year of publication. The Daily Report was founded 80 years ago.

The Daily Bulletin’s circulation area will go as far west as Kellogg Hill and include the San Gabriel Valley communities of La Verne, San Dimas, Diamond Bar, Claremont and Pomona. It will extend east to Fontana and from Mt. Baldy south to the Chino Hills.

Circulation of the Daily Report has been slightly ahead of the Progress Bulletin. Combined, they sell about 90,000 copies daily. Competitors in various parts of the circulation area include the Orange County Register, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the San Bernardino Sun and the Riverside Press-Enterprise. The Times is the only other daily newspaper that serves the entire circulation area.

The merger was announced in Wednesday’s editions of the Daily Report and Progress Bulletin with a joint statement by Caffoe and Don Russell, general manger of the Progress Bulletin. They said that “by consolidating forces, we will be able to concentrate on one larger newspaper that will be much improved, better designed and organized.”

Russell will become general operations manager of the Daily Bulletin. George L. Collier, editor of the Daily Report, will be editor of the combined newspaper.