S.D. County Edition Will Close Dec. 18 : Recession: The edition, which opened in 1978, is a victim of the hard economic times in Southern California, Times executives say.

SAN DIEGO —  The Times’ San Diego County Edition, which opened in 1978, will close Dec. 18, a victim of the lingering downturn in the Southern California economy, Times executives announced Friday at a newsroom meeting.

The decision to cease the daily edition was an economic, not a journalistic, one, driven by declining advertising revenues, editors said.

“This is a painful day for all of us,” Shelby Coffey III, editor of The Times, said as staff members gathered around the city desk and wiped away tears.

The edition, he said, had been a “prized and powerful voice” in San Diego, delivering readers “aggressive and unbiased” reporting. But, Coffey said, “this is an economic decision, based on a harshly changing economic environment in Southern California.”

After Dec. 18, The Times’ main Los Angeles edition will be delivered daily to San Diego. A bureau of San Diego-based reporters will report the news from the nation’s sixth-largest city, and Times advertising salespeople will continue to sell space in the paper.

None of the 108 full-time employees at the San Diego County Edition will face layoffs, Coffey said. All will be offered jobs at the paper’s other offices around Southern California.

But the closure of the daily edition means that San Diego, which fielded three newspapers at the beginning of 1992, will be down to one by the end of the year.

In February, the Copley Press, which published the morning San Diego Union and the afternoon Tribune, merged the two papers into the San Diego Union-Tribune. It publishes both a morning and afternoon edition and has consistently maintained a wide lead in circulation over The Times in San Diego.

“From a human point of view, it’s a grim event,” Herb Klein, editor of the Copley Press, said Friday of the closure of The Times’ San Diego County Edition. “But I think everyone has to face economics at this time. Surely, we have, too.”

Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s spokesman, Paul Downey, said the closure marks a sad moment in San Diego history.

“It’s sad for Times employees, but it’s sad and unhealthy for the San Diego community,” he said. “There needs to be diversity of opinion, there needs to be a watchdog on government. Competition is the key element in that.

“You go from three newspapers in this town to one--and we’re the sixth-largest city in the nation--it’s not a good situation,” Downey said.

Since April 6, 1978, when the San Diego County Edition began publishing, the edition has been at hand for the events that shaped the city: the 1978 PSA crash, the 1984 McDonald’s massacre in San Ysidro, the Padres’ National League championship that same year, the court trials of Mayor Roger Hedgecock, the fall of the J. David & Co. investment house, the 1989 travails of Sheriff John Duffy and, just this year, the America’s Cup sailing regatta.

The announcement of the closure came in concert with added cost-cutting measures. The Times said Friday that it will offer employees a voluntary buyout plan and disclosed that top management will forgo raises for 1993.

The cost-cutting moves are dictated, executives said, by a sharp decline in advertising, which accounts for about 80% of The Times’ total revenue.

Closing the San Diego County Edition will result in an annual savings of approximately $8 million, David Laventhol, publisher and chief executive officer of The Times, said in a statement. “Faced with a very limited base in San Diego and current economic pressures, we must focus on investments closer to home, such as the San Fernando Valley,” he said.

Saying there had been a “fundamental change in the Southern California” marketplace, Lawrence M. Higby, The Times’ executive vice president for marketing, said Friday that help-wanted ads this year are down 20%, automotive is off 10% and real estate down about 14%.

Display ads--for home furnishings, travel, airlines--are also down, Higby said.

“Prospects in 1992 are much bleaker in California than they were in 1978, when the (San Diego County) Edition began,” Coffey said Friday.

Seeking to cut costs by reducing staffing to “more manageable” levels, the newspaper announced that the “special voluntary separation program” is being offered from Nov. 10 through Jan. 8 to full-time employees with at least one year of service.

The program provides eligible employees with up to two years of pay, depending on their length of service, the newspaper said in the statement.

Through ongoing attrition and the buyout plan, The Times hopes to cut its staff by about 500 during 1993, Laventhol said. The Times currently has 5,200 full-time employees.

It was not possible Friday to say how much the buyout plan might save The Times next year, officials said. The cost will result in a one-time charge against fourth-quarter 1992 earnings of Times Mirror Co., parent company of The Times.

Last year, the company offered a buyout plan to employees. About 300 took part, resulting in a one-time pretax charge of $22 million against the fourth-quarter 1991 Times Mirror earnings.

The Times plans to keep a six-member editorial staff in San Diego after Dec. 18, Coffey said. The paper will continue to sell advertisements from San Diego.

A “majority” of the 45-member full-time editorial staff will be transferred to The Times’ San Fernando Valley Edition, Coffey said.

The San Diego County Edition has a daily circulation of 61,653 and a Sunday circulation of 71,246.

Union-Tribune circulation last week averaged 382,554 daily and hit 452,887 on Sunday, Klein said.