O.C. Women’s Magazine Folding--Into Another

Less than three years after its first press run, Orange County Woman magazine is being discontinued.

The publication, which had its debut in May 1997 as the first magazine geared toward local female entrepreneurs, apparently fell victim to Orange County’s fiercely competitive free-media market, which includes OC Metro, OC Weekly, OC Golf, Coast Magazine and upstart OC Family, among others.

“There are an awful lot of publications going after the same ad dollars in this county,” said Steve Churm, owner of Churm Publishing Inc., the Newport Beach-based company that puts out OC Metro and OC Family.

Orange County Woman will cease publication as a separate magazine after the December issue.

Some of Orange County Woman’s content will be folded into Orange Coast magazine as a new section beginning in January. It will appear in a drastically scaled-back form, without a travel column, society page or calendar of events. The new section will run 16 pages, about one-third the size of the typical issue of Orange County Woman, said Patrick Mott, editor of Orange Coast magazine.

No layoffs are expected either at Orange Coast or Orange County Woman, he added.

Ruth Ko, president of Newport Beach-based Orange Coast Kommunications, which publishes Orange County Woman and Orange Coast magazines, could not be reached for comment.

Orange Coast, a glossy lifestyle magazine founded in 1974, has 16,000 paid subscribers and distributes 40,000 magazines monthly.