Daily Pilot’s Subscribers to Receive Times

COSTA MESA —  The Times Orange County and the Daily Pilot will be delivered together beginning Monday under a one-price deal to subscribers in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, the newspapers announced Friday.

The marketing agreement comes less than a month after The Times’ owner, Times Mirror Co., announced the purchase of the 10,000-circulation Costa Mesa-based publication from Coast Community News Inc.

Times Mirror also negotiated with Coast Community News to purchase the Huntington Beach Independent, the Glendale News Press, the Burbank Leader and the Foothill Leader. The price of the deal, which is expected to close June 18, was not disclosed.

Times Mirror spokeswoman Martha Goldstein said that the joint delivery will save subscribers money in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.

Daily Pilot subscribers now pay $7.50 a month for the six-day-a-week publication. Beginning Monday, their rate to receive both the Pilot and The Times will drop to $6.48 a month--the cost of a new Times subscription for the first year.

In addition, Times Orange County subscribers in the two cities will receive the Daily Pilot free. The Daily Pilot will not be delivered separately, but will be inserted into The Times Orange County Edition, Goldstein said.

Jim Gressinger, publisher of Coast Community News, said on Friday that 19 people lost jobs at the publishing company’s offices in Costa Mesa and Glendale. In addition, Coast Community News “ceased to exist,” Gressinger said. The five publications will now be operated under the name California Community News Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Times Mirror that will have 212 employees.

Gressinger, the subsidiary’s general manager, said that joint distribution is expected to more than double the Daily Pilot’s circulation. The Times Orange County--with daily circulation of 198,126 and 291,323 on Sunday--delivers about 22,000 copies to Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, Gressinger said.

The purchase of the Daily Pilot, which was sold by Times Mirror in 1983 for an undisclosed sum and has gone through financial troubles for the past several years, is the latest volley in the ongoing circulation battle between The Times Orange County and the Orange County Register, the flagship publication of Irvine-based Freedom Newspapers.

Michael Lednovich, director of corporate communications for Freedom Newspapers, said that the Times-Daily Pilot combination follows “the strategy pioneered by the Register.”

Over the past several years, Freedom Newspapers has purchased a number of small Orange County dailies and weeklies, including the South County News and the Daily Sun Post in San Clemente.

While California Community News announced layoffs, Freedom Newspapers was trimming staff at its recent acquisition.

The Daily Sun Post, purchased early this year, announced that it was cutting half of its 52-member staff effective July 2 and changing the publication from an afternoon to a morning publication.

The majority of the furloughed workers were in the circulation and printing departments, said new Publisher David Nydegger. Some laid-off workers may be eventually transferred to other Freedom locations, Nydegger said, although it was not immediately clear how many.

Nydegger said that printing for the 8,000-circulation, weekday newspaper will move to Anaheim.

The Anaheim Bulletin and the South County News, which covers San Clemente, Mission Viejo, Lake Forest, Laguna Hills, San Juan Capistrano, Dana Point and Leisure World, are now distributed weekly in those cities as part of the Orange County Register at no extra cost to Register subscribers.