Times Mirror Buys Daily Pilot, 4 Other Community Newspapers

Times Mirror Co., publisher of the Los Angeles Times, said Friday that it has purchased five Southland community newspapers, including the Daily Pilot in Costa Mesa.

Times Mirror acquired the newspapers after owner Coast Community News invited the company to bid for them. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Beside the Pilot, the newspapers are the Huntington Beach Independent, the Glendale News Press, the Burbank Leader and the Foothill Leader, which serves the San Gabriel Valley. All five were owned and printed in Costa Mesa by Coast Community News.

Times Mirror also said it is creating a subsidiary called California Community News to manage the publications. All will continue to operate, said Stephen C. Meier, a vice president of Times Mirror. Specific operating plans, however, including the fates of employees, were not disclosed.

The five newspapers together employ about 200 people.

“I think that it was an interesting opportunity to provide some very local news services to readers and to advertisers,” Meier said of the decision to buy the newspapers.

The purchase comes at a time when Times Mirror’s flagship Los Angeles Times is competing fiercely with two entrenched regional dailies: the Orange County Register and the Daily News, which circulates in the San Fernando, San Gabriel and Santa Clarita valleys.

Freedom Newspapers Inc. in Irvine, which owns the Register, has bought a string of community newspapers that it either delivers free or combines with the main newspaper. Freedom spokesman Michael Lednovich said Friday that he had heard that Times Mirror might be interested in re-acquiring the Pilot, which it sold 10 years ago, with the goal of using its presses to start a chain of community publications of its own.

“The strategy in Orange County has changed,” Lednovich said, noting that each of the county’s two large dailies now has supporting community newspapers. “It’s another step in the continuing newspaper war in Orange County.”

Times Mirror owned the Daily Pilot until 1983, when it sold the newspaper to the Ingersoll Publications Co. chain in Princeton, N.J. Circulation dropped, however, and the scrappy small daily continued to change hands.

Under Coast Community News, the Daily Pilot in 1991 cut publication to three days a week as increasing competition from The Times Orange County Edition and the Register squeezed it financially. But the Pilot has steadily fought back and has recently been publishing six days a week.

The Pilot has 10,000 subscribers in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. On Thursdays and Saturdays, the newspaper distributes another 30,000 newspapers for free. The weekly Huntington Beach Independent distributes about 54,000 copies a week, all free.

Coast Community executives said they are pleased with the sale.

“The Pilot and Independent will be stronger than ever,” said Jim Gressinger, publisher of the Pilot. “And our readers, our advertisers, customers and employees will benefit tremendously.”

Times staff writers Jodi Wilgoren and John O’Dell contributed to this report.