S.D. Tribune Will Merge With Union : Media: The two will combine next year into a single newspaper with morning and afternoon editions. Declining circulation was blamed.

SAN DIEGO —  The San Diego Union and Tribune, whose distinct editorial voices and highly competitive news staffs belied their common ownership for more than 60 years, will merge early next year into a single newspaper with morning and afternoon editions, publisher Helen K. Copley announced Wednesday.

Reflecting a nationwide shift by readers toward morning newspapers, the planned merger stems largely from declining circulation of the afternoon Tribune, a 96-year-old publication which itself merged with two other papers over the past half a century.

Tribune officials added that the general economic downturn contributed to the decision.

“The Tribune is a wonderful newspaper, and it’s not that we haven’t tried our very best to maintain it as a separate and independent paper,” said Copley, the chairwoman and chief executive of Copley Press Inc.

The new joint newspaper, to be called the San Diego Union-Tribune, will be a larger paper combining “the best of each newspaper’s news staffs, columnists, features, sections and comics,” Copley said.

Some of the two newspapers’ 1,875 staffers in all departments face possible layoffs, but neither the extent of the cutbacks nor the manner in which they will be made has been decided, Copley executives said. A committee made up of top management from both the Union and Tribune will work out details on how the two papers’ staffs will be combined.

Another major uncertainty is whether Union Editor Gerald Warren, Tribune Editor Neil Morgan or a new editor will lead the new joint publication.

“Given the inevitable demise of afternoon newspapers, I like the way this is being done,” Morgan said. “These two papers have clobbered each other. Now we are going to work together, meld our imprints. It’s going to be fascinating.”

Typified by a feisty style of reporting and a more moderate editorial stance than the staid, staunchly conservative Union, the Tribune won two Pulitzer Prizes over the past dozen years. It won for best local reporting in 1979, based on staff coverage of a mid-air collision over San Diego in which 144 people died, and for editorial writing on immigration affairs in 1987.

Because there had been consistent rumors about the Tribune’s possible merger, sale or even closure over the past several years, there was more surprise over the timing than the content of Wednesday’s announcement.

Only several weeks ago, Tribune staffers were assured by Morgan that Copley intended to maintain two separate newspapers for the foreseeable future, according to one Tribune staffer. But despite such assurances, many Tribune employees said they had braced themselves for the inevitability of the paper’s demise.

“Frankly, we felt it was going to happen,” said David Hasemyer, a Tribune reporter whose wife also writes for the paper. “No matter what assurances we had been given for so long, the trend across the country has not been good for afternoon papers.”

Merging the two papers would eliminate the need to acquire additional newspaper presses, one industry expert said. Another noted that the merger might be timed to match the April expiration date of the San Diego Newspaper Guild’s union contract for about 1,100 editorial, advertising, circulation and business department employees.

The newspapers’ union members “have a contract in place,” local Guild President Ed Jahn said Wednesday. “Our employees do have job protection and security. We intend to ensure that these rights are upheld.”

Founded in 1895, the Tribune was San Diego County’s circulation leader until 1966, but now has less than half of the Union’s readership--116,694 compared to 271,068, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation statistics. The Tribune’s circulation peaked at 133,711 in 1979.

In the Tribune newsroom, where Morgan informed staffers about the merger in an early morning meeting, the news was greeted with both tears and a kind of gallows humor. While some weeping reporters and editors had to be consoled by colleagues, others put hastily scribbled signs on their desks.

“Will Write for Food,” one said. “Going Out of Business Sale,” read another.

Times staff writers Alan Abrahamson, Greg Johnson and Nora Zamichow contributed to this story.