Camarillo Daily News to Close in December : Media: The 67-year-old publication will be replaced with a zoned version of the Ventura County Star-Free Press.

The 67-year-old Camarillo Daily News will cease to exist next month, newspaper officials announced Thursday.

The paper will be replaced by a zoned edition of the Ventura County Star-Free Press, which will be called the Camarillo Star-Free Press.

E. W. Scripps Co., which purchased the Camarillo Daily News last year from Harris Enterprises, will begin publishing its new edition Dec. 27, said John P. Wilcox, publisher of Ventura County Newspapers.

The closing of the Camarillo Daily News follows staff layoffs that had cut into the paper’s editorial product over the last year.

It represents the latest in a series of changes on the local newspaper scene that have led Editor & Publisher magazine to call Ventura County the site of one of the hottest newspaper wars in the nation.

The Los Angeles Times launched its daily Ventura County Edition in 1990, after previously operating a weekly Ventura County section. The Times expanded its coverage of the county in May by starting east county and west county editions.

Scripps also owns the Ventura-based Ventura County Star-Free Press and three other small daily newspapers in the county, which operate under the name Ventura County Newspapers.

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The newspaper chain, headquartered in Ohio, also acquired full ownership of the daily Simi Valley Enterprise and the weekly Moorpark News-Mirror last year. It already owned the daily Thousand Oaks News Chronicle, and in the last year began publishing a zoned edition of its Ventura paper for Oxnard, the Oxnard Star-Free Press.

The Thomson Newspapers group of Canada--publisher of the Oxnard Press Courier--entered the Camarillo market earlier this year with its twice-weekly Camarillo Sun.

The Los Angeles Daily News has special sections for both Simi Valley and the Conejo Valley. It opened a Camarillo office last year but closed it a few months later. It still publishes a west county edition.

Wilcox characterized the Camarillo move as a merger that “will greatly enhance not only the news and information package, but offer significantly more market share for advertisers.”

The revamped daily will offer news about Camarillo, plus news and advertising carried in the Ventura Star-Free Press, Wilcox said.

But Camarillo leaders said they were saddened to learn of the demise of the Camarillo Daily News.

“I’m really sorry to hear that,” said Councilman Ken Gose.

Former Camarillo Daily News Editor Harold Kinsch called it a mistake.

“The word news has been part of that paper’s flag since 1926,” he said. “If they change its name, it will lose its identity in the community.”

Karen Magnuson, editor of the Oxnard Press Courier, would not say if her paper contemplates any countermoves in Camarillo.

“We are in a hard-core newspaper war,” she said. “This particular trend, where they are based in Ventura yet they are trying to piecemeal news to readers in other cities, just isn’t going to cut it.

“I’m saddened that a newspaper that has meant so much to a community has closed its doors. And really, in the end it’s the readers who suffer.”

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Last December, a branch of the Scripps family closed another Ventura County newspaper, the Santa Paula Chronicle.

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, which reports newspapers sales nationwide, the Camarillo Daily News had shown circulation gains in recent months, after years of declining readership.

Its six-month daily circulation average as of September stood at 10,543--an increase of nearly 800 papers since September, 1992. That, however, was still below the number of newspapers sold in 1989.

Thursday’s announcement follows the recent appointment of Wilcox as publisher of Ventura County Newspapers. Wilcox recently ordered the removal of furniture from the Camarillo Daily News to his new office in Ventura.

Times correspondent J. E. Mitchell contributed to this story.