Orange County Register

The Orange County Register is a paid daily newspaper published in California. The Register, published in Anaheim, is owned by Digital First Media. Freedom Communications owned the newspaper from 1935 to 2016.

Orange County Register
The January 1, 2013, front page
of the Register
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)Digital First Media
PublisherRon Hasse[1]
EditorFrank Pine[2]
Founded1905 (1905) (as Santa Ana Daily Register)
LanguageEnglish
Headquarters2190 S. Towne Centre Place
Anaheim, California 92806
Circulation80,000 daily; 180,000 Sunday
ISSN0886-4934
OCLC number12199155
Websiteocregister.com
The Orange County Register logo in 2007

History

The Register was founded by a consortium as the Santa Ana Daily Register in 1905. It was sold to J.P. Baumgartner in 1906 and to J. Frank Burke in 1927. In 1935 it was bought by Raymond C. Hoiles, who renamed it the Santa Ana Register. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hoiles was one of the few newspaper publishers in the country to oppose the forced relocation of Japanese and Japanese-Americans to camps away from the West Coast.[3] Hoiles reorganized his holdings as Freedom Newspapers, Inc. In 1950, the name was changed to Freedom Communications. The paper dropped "Santa Ana" from its title in 1952.

In 1956, the newspaper was a prominent supporter of a vociferous campaign by anti-communists against the Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act, claiming that it was part of a Communist plot to establish concentration camps in Alaska. Circulation rose with the burgeoning population of Orange County and after the Register added a morning edition in 1959.

In 1970 Hoiles' sons, Clarence and Harry, became co-publishers until 1979, when R. David Threshie, Clarence's son-in-law, was named to the position.

1980s

Faced with an aggressive push into the county by the Los Angeles Times under then-publisher Otis Chandler, Threshie brought in 30-year-old N. Christian Anderson III as editor. Political positions were restricted to the editorial page. In 1981, the paper began publishing in full color.

In 1985, the paper assumed the name The Orange County Register. In the same year it won its first Pulitzer Prize, for its photographic coverage of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. It won additional Pulitzers in 1989 for beat reporting by Edward Humes on U.S. military problems with night-vision goggles and in 1996 for an investigation into Ricardo Asch's fertility clinics.[4]

1990s

In 1990, the newspaper launched the 24-hour OCN news channel with news and feature stories about Orange County. It closed in 2001.[5]

In 1992, Orange County Register Communications launched Excélsior, a Spanish-language weekly. In 2010 Excélsior had a circulation of 51,000.[6] It covers Orange County's growing Hispanic community, which now numbers over a million. Julio Saenz is the editor and general manager.

In 1999, Threshie became Chairman of the Board of Freedom Communications, and N. Christian Anderson III assumed the position of publisher and chief executive officer.

2000s

Ken Brusic was named vice president of content and executive editor in April 2002.[7] In 2003, a family schism led to a sale on Oct. 9th of a majority interest in Freedom Communications to investors led by the Blackstone Group and Providence Equity Partners. Through a stock arrangement, the Hoiles family descendants retained control of the board.

In 2006, Orange County Register Communications launched the OC Post, a tabloid with shortened versions of Register stories as well as news articles from the Associated Press. The paper also had its first significant staff reductions in December 2006, with 40 newsroom employees taking buyouts, along with a small number of layoffs.

By April 2007, The Orange County Register had made additional staff cuts to help maintain shareholder profit, which had averaged more than 20 percent annually in the preceding five years. Since the launch of the OC Post in 2006, OCRC has cut the Register's editorial staff by 10 percent, eliminated its 3% holiday bonuses for editorial staff. and postponed pay raises to editorial staff, which had averaged 3 percent annually, for six months. In September 2007, Terry Horne replaced N. Christian Anderson III as publisher.

In June 2008, KTLA, The Los Angeles Times and Fox News reported that the Register had begun a one-month trial of outsourcing some layout and copy-editing work to India to save costs.[8] The trial was not deemed a success, and since then editing has been done by the Register in Orange County. In spring of 2009, Freedom Communications instituted furloughs for all employees nationwide, followed by a permanent 5% pay cut starting in July 2009. News reports in August 2009 indicated that Freedom Communications planned to file for bankruptcy and turn control of its publications, including The Orange County Register, over to its lenders.[9]

In September 2009, a column written by sports columnist Mark Whicker caused controversy.[10] In the column,[11] Whicker wrote about various sporting events that had occurred over the preceding 18 years, and how they had been missed by Jaycee Dugard, a girl who had been kidnapped, raped, and forced to bear her kidnapper's children. Whicker ended his column with the line "Jaycee, you have left the yard." The column generated widespread criticism and was parodied in blogs such as Deadspin,[12] who called it "the single worst piece of journalism ever committed on this page," and The Huffington Post.

2010s

On July 25, 2012, The Orange County Register and six other papers were purchased by 2100 Trust LLC.[13] The papers continued to operate under the Freedom Communications name.[14] In December the Register changed its logo and branding, dropping "The" in favor of Orange County Register.[15]

A lawsuit was filed in October 2013 by the former owners of Freedom Communications against Aaron Kushner, principal of 2100 Trust, demanding that Kushner's company pay more than $17 million remaining on the sale. The Los Angeles Times wrote that Kushner, "a former greeting-card executive with no prior media experience," claimed that the prior owners had given him "inaccurate valuations for a host of crucial financial indicators" and that he faced "$62.3 million in unexpected financial liabilities as a result."[14] On August 19, 2013, the Long Beach Register was launched as an edition of the Orange County Register serving the Long Beach, California, community. It was focused solely on community news, including city government, public and private education, local sports coverage, business and entertainment as an intended competitor to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. In addition, on January 20, 2014, The Press-Enterprise became an edition of the Orange County Register while maintaining coverage of the Inland Empire.[16]

On April 16, 2014, the Orange County Register launched the Los Angeles Register, "more a print play than a digital one" serving Los Angeles County. It was the first time since the Herald-Examiner folded on November 1, 1989, that a main competitor to the Los Angeles Times was launched, this time intended to be "as local as one edition can be for the entire county."[17] Five months later, Kushner announced in a company memo that the Los Angeles Register was ending publication effective immediately. Kushner wrote that "pundits and local competitors" will be quick to call the effort a failure while he believes that "not taking bold steps toward growth" would have been the true failure.[18] The Long Beach Register became a Sunday-only publication in June 2014,[19] and ceased publication in December 2014.[20] In October the Los Angeles Times sued the Register for failing to pay more than $2 million to the Times for delivery services for the now-defunct Register newspapers in Los Angeles and Long Beach. In March 2014 the Los Angeles Superior Court granted the Times a $4.2 million writ of attachment to secure the ability of the Times to enforce a possible judgment in its favor.[21]

On March 10, 2015, Aaron Kushner and his partner, Eric Spitz, resigned from executive duties at the paper and Freedom Communications Inc. The company was rumored to be readying itself for a potential sale. Publisher Rich Mirman, a former Las Vegas casino executive who had invested in Freedom, was announced as the new president and chief executive.[22]

On February 12, 2016, Freedom Communications announced that the Orange County Register and the Press-Enterprise along with its websites, community weeklies and the two Spanish-Language weeklies Excelsior in Orange County and La Prensa in the Inland Empire, were being placed in a "stalking horse" auction after the company declared bankrupt at the end of 2015. Both Digital First Media and Tribune Publishing were the bidders. The auction started on March 21 and was completed on March 31, 2016. The U.S. Department of Justice blocked the sale of Freedom Communications to Tribune Publishing because it would create a newspaper monopoly in both Orange and Riverside Counties..On March 21, 2016, Digital First Media acquired both the Orange County Register and the Press-Enterprise for $52.3 million in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana. Los Angeles News Group was renamed Southern California News Group on March 31, 2016, once the sale of Freedom Communications to Digital First Media was completed. It has 11 paid regional dailies, and community weeklies serving the South Bay communities of Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach and Palos Verdes Peninsula, the Long Beach neighborhoods north and east of downtown and over 20 community weeklies in Orange County, as well as the Spanish-language weeklies Impacto USA and Unidos, now consolidated as Excelsior, which will have three editions for Los Angeles County, Orange County and Inland Empire.[23] On Sept. 21, 2016, it was announced that the Register would move its headquarters to 2190 Towne Centre Place, Anaheim, and vacate its longtime home at 625 N. Grand Ave., Santa Ana.[24] The new headquarters opened April 24, 2017.[25]

The Alliance for Audited Media reported in 2017 that the Register's circulation had dropped to 80,000 on weekdays and 180,000 on Sundays.[26]

Editorial stances

The Register was notable for its generally libertarian-leaning editorial page.[27] Although it sometimes supported Republican politicians and positions, it was the largest newspaper in the country to have opposed the Iraq War from the beginning and opposed laws regulating issues such as prostitution and drug use. It was one of a handful of newspapers that opposed the internment of Japanese aliens and Japanese-Americans during World War II.[28][29] It also opposed Proposition 8 in 2008, which proposed a ban on same-sex marriage.[30] After the Digital First purchase of Freedom Communications, the Register's editorial page was merged with that of the Los Angeles Daily News and Digital First's other papers in the region to form a single editorial board for the Southern California News Group on regional and national issues.[31]

Other publications

In addition to publishing the Orange County Register, Southern California News Group publishes OC Family magazine, Coast magazine, and the following affiliated weeklies:[32]

Online content

On April 1, 2013, the Orange County Register began providing its online content through a metered paywall. Most online content required a subscription, with the exception of local weather, traffic, Associated Press or non-Register articles, and a few select local news articles.[41] As of October 2015, the website does not have a paywall and online content is free. As of May 2018, the paywall has been reinstated.[42]

See also

References
  1. "Register names new publisher" Executive team named for So Cal News Group to lead the Orange County Register, April 2, 2016
  2. "" Executive Leadership, updated April 14, 2016
  3. Register, Orange County (November 18, 2007). "In his own words: R.C. Hoiles on the WWII Japanese internment". Orange County Register. Retrieved September 15, 2019.
  4. Graham, Harry L., Stop the Damned Presses!, pp. 183–86, Words & Pictures Press, Clear-water, FL, 2005.
  5. Moxley, R. Scott. "So Long, OCN", OC Weekly, Orange County, 20 September 2001. Retrieved on 23 May 2015.
  6. "Updated 'Excélsior' Statistics for 2010". Echo Media.
  7. "Executive Leadership". The Orange County Register. Retrieved August 6, 2011.
  8. "OC Register to Outsource Editing to India". Fox News. June 25, 2008. Retrieved April 20, 2013.
  9. Kouwe, Zachery (August 31, 2009). "Owner of Orange County Register May File for Bankruptcy". New York Times. Retrieved May 25, 2010.
  10. Pérez-Peña, Richard (September 14, 2009). "Outrage Over Column on California Kidnapping". New York Times. Retrieved May 25, 2010.
  11. Whicker, Mark (September 7, 2009). "Many odd things have happened in sports the past 18 years". The Orange County Register. Archived from the original on June 25, 2011. Retrieved August 6, 2011.
  12. Tommy Craggs (September 9, 2009). "Mark Whicker Leaves The Yard". Deadspin.com. Retrieved August 6, 2011.
  13. Milbourn, Mary Ann (July 25, 2012). "Freedom Communications closes sale of the Register". Orange County Register (archive). Archived from the original on August 29, 2012. Retrieved April 1, 2013.
  14. Ken Bensinger, "O.C. Register Sellers Sue New Ower," Los Angeles Times, November 1, 2013, page 33
  15. "Orange County Register". Orange County Register. Archived from the original on December 17, 2012. Retrieved March 31, 2014 (December 15 archive shows previous logo).
  16. "To Our Readers: Meet the New and Enhanced Press-Enterprise". The Press-Enterprise. Riverside, California. January 20, 2014. Retrieved September 23, 2014.
  17. Doctor, Ken (April 16, 2014). "Six things to consider about the new Los Angeles Register". Nieman Lab. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Retrieved September 23, 2014.
  18. Khouri, Andrew (September 23, 2014). "Freedom Newspapers Ceases Publication of L.A. Register". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 23, 2014.
  19. Lopez, Ricardo (June 3, 2014). "O.C. Register owner to cut staff, merge Long Beach and L.A. newspapers". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
  20. Pfeifer, Stuart; Khouri, Andrew (December 28, 2014). "Long Beach Register stops publishing". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 30, 2014.
  21. Reynolds, Matt (March 17, 2015). "LA Times Wins $4.2M Lien Against Register". Courthouse News Service. Retrieved April 9, 2015.
  22. "O.C. Register owners quit: Aaron Kushner, Eric Spitz resign executive duties". Los Angeles Times. March 10, 2015. Retrieved March 11, 2015.
  23. Pressberg, Matt. "Tribune Abandons Bid For OC Register Following DOJ Lawsuit, Paving Way For Digital First Purchase". International Business Times. International Business Times. Retrieved May 4, 2016.
  24. "Orange County Register moving headquarters from Santa Ana to Anaheim in 2017 – Orange County Register". Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  25. "Contact Us". Orange County Register. March 16, 2017. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  26. Brandon Angel (May 7, 2018). "The OC Register will no longer cover Orange County small theater productions". Daily Titan. Retrieved September 15, 2019.
  27. Lattman, Peter; Adams, Russell (August 31, 2009). "Paper Owner Freedom Plans to File For Chapter 11". The Wall Street Journal. p. B1.
  28. "R.C. Hoiles, Chief of Freedom Newspaper Chain, Dies at 91". Los Angeles Times. October 31, 1970. p. C1.
  29. "Raymond C. Hoiles, 91, Is Dead". New York Times. October 31, 1970. p. 32.
  30. "Who Opposes Prop 8?". 2008. Archived from the original on October 30, 2008. Retrieved December 4, 2008.
  31. "Brian Calle expands oversight of opinion and commentary coverage". Orange County Register. April 14, 2016.
  32. Register, Orange County. "Advertising and Marketing Services | Brands". OC Register. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  33. Era Ending at Anaheim Bulletin
  34. OC Register Ramps Up Newport Beach, Costa Mesa Coverage
  35. DiMartino, Mediha (May 30, 2014). "Sources Say Freedom to Furlough Staff, Trim Long Beach to Weekly Schedule". Orange County Business Journal. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
  36. Freedom Newspapers Buys Fullerton Weekly
  37. Register Parent Buys 3 Weekly Newspapers
  38. Irvine World News officially becomes daily newspaper
  39. Media General Puts 31 Papers, Including 13 in County, Up for Sale
  40. Owner of Orange County Register Buys 30 Weeklies
  41. Register to launch online paywall (Subscription required) Retrieved April 1, 2013
  42. OC Register to charge for unlimited access to digital news to help support local journalism Retrieved July 18, 2018
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