Freedom Newspapers Negotiating to Buy the Daily Sun-Post, a San Clemente Paper

Freedom Newspapers Inc., which owns the Orange County Register, is negotiating with South Coast Newspapers in Oceanside to buy the Daily Sun-Post, an 8,000-circulation newspaper in San Clemente.

Though no deal has been completed, talks between the two media companies are underway, Freedom spokesman Michael Lednovich said Wednesday.

Richard D. Newell, vice president of South Coast Newspapers, confirmed that the companies are discussing the Daily Sun-Post. “That’s all it is at this point,” Newell said. South Coast Newspapers is the California division of Howard Publications, a Seattle-based publisher of 18 daily newspapers.

Lednovich would not say what Freedom would do with the Sun-Post if it purchased the 55-year-old community newspaper. Freedom already publishes the weekly San Clemente News.

For the past three years, Freedom has been buying small weekly newspapers in Orange County, including eight in South County, and adding them to the Community News weekly sections of the Orange County Register. The newspapers are delivered free and inserted in the Register’s editions on Thursday for subscribers living within particular communities.

Last summer, the company also converted its two smaller Orange County dailies--the Anaheim Bulletin and La Habra Daily Star-Progress--to weekly Community News sections, bringing to 19 the number of small newspapers that are distributed inside the Register.