Management at the News-Chronicle and the Star Free-Press declined to comment. The Simi Valley Enterprise said its ad volume is flat. The Camarillo Daily News also said its advertising volume is down this year, but declined to offer figures. The Courier’s advertising inch count is down 15% this year, according to Pauline Weaver, the paper’s advertising manager. And to draw advertisers, newspapers are being pressured to offer discounts and other concessions that in the past were anathema. Some of the papers are working with smaller staffs even as they are asked to produce more local news, which publishers believe will increase readership. Even so, the county’s five small dailies are grappling with the recession. Yet with Ventura County expected to be a valuable market, newspaper companies are not likely to walk away from the fight. Over the same period, the combined circulation of the five small papers in Ventura County has dropped 3% to 114,770, according to the ABC. The Times saw its circulation in the county climb 16% in those three years, to 45,980. Since March 31, 1989, the Daily News’ weekday circulation in Ventura County has risen 18%, to 19,134 as of March 31, 1992, with most of its circulation based in eastern Ventura County. Before the bigger papers put more resources into the area, “everyone generally stayed in their own a back yard,” said Gary Morgan, a journalism professor at Oxnard College. But it reported that for the 12-month period ended March 31, the Daily News’ weekday circulation rose by 10% in Ventura County, and The Times’ rose 9%.Īnalysts say the newspaper rivalry in the county has been intense since the Daily News in 1989, and The Times a year later, began publishing separate editions in Ventura County. The ABC said six-month circulation figures aren’t available for the Daily News and The Times in Ventura County. In contrast, the Star-Free Press’ average paid daily circulation rose 1.2% for the same period. That is the latest period for which figures are available from the Audit Bureau of Circulations of Schaumburg, Ill. The Camarillo Daily News and the Simi Valley Enterprise, along with the Thousand Oaks News-Chronicle and the Oxnard Press-Courier, saw their weekday circulation numbers drop between 4.6% and 7.2% for the six-month period ended March 31. If the deal goes through, Scripps will be acquiring newspapers that have been losing ground. Ventura County is “among the most competitive areas in the country,” said Sam Papert, president of the Papert Cos., a Dallas-based advertising-sales firm that represents 400 newspapers, including the Courier and the Star. Orange County, by contrast, has more than three times Ventura County’s 217,000 households, according to the 1990 census, yet it has one fewer daily newspaper. The county’s readers have a choice of seven dailies. The battle also reflects the unusual media glut in Ventura County, which is saturated with papers relative to the size of its population. Indeed, Scripps’ aggressive move comes amid a struggle among all of the county’s papers to grow at a time when the recession is hurting their circulation and advertising revenue. Although the Star declined to comment, Davis declared, “We’re embroiled in a newspaper war.” Next month Davis also plans to launch a free weekly that his troops will toss outside 35,000 homes in the Star’s turf in Ventura. “I can foresee them group marketing the papers” to advertisers and readers, said Kirk Davis, publisher of the Press-Courier, which recently invested $13 million in a new press and in recent months has sharpened its rivalry with the larger Star-Free Press. Nonetheless, newsroom workers as well as competitors said they expected Scripps to use the resources from its newly acquired papers as ammunition in the increasingly competitive newspaper market in Ventura County. In the letter to employees, Scripps suggested that the acquired newspapers would not be combined with the Ventura Star-Free Press or the Thousand Oaks News-Chronicle. Bowman, 55, will become special assistant to LaDow.) Irby, 42, as the new editor of the Ventura Star-Free Press. (Separately, Scripps on Monday named John R.
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