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''The Orange County Register'' is a paid daily newspaper published in California. The ''Register'', published in
Orange County, California Orange County (officially the County of Orange; often initialized O.C.) is a county (United States), county located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population ...
, is owned by the private equity firm Alden Global Capital via its Digital First Media News subsidiaries.
Freedom Communications Freedom Communications, Inc. was an American media conglomerate that operated daily and weekly newspapers, websites and mobile applications and television stations, as well as ''Coast Magazine'' and other specialty publications. Headquartered at ...
owned the newspaper from 1935 to 2016.


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. 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 Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...
. Circulation rose with the burgeoning population of Orange County and after the ''Register'' added a morning edition in 1959. In 1970, Hoiles's 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 The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' under 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 The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
, for its photographic coverage of the
1984 Summer Olympics The 1984 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXIII Olympiad and commonly known as Los Angeles 1984) were an international multi-sport event held from July 28 to August 12, 1984, in Los Angeles, California, United States. It marked the ...
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.


1990s

In 1990, the newspaper launched the 24-hour OCN news channel with news and feature stories about Orange County. It closed in 2001. In 1992, Orange County Register Communications launched ''
Excélsior ''Excélsior'' is a daily newspaper in Mexico City. It is the second-oldest paper in the city after ''El Universal (Mexico City), El Universal'', printing its first issue on March 18, 1917. The newspaper's headquarters are located at Avenida Buc ...
,'' a Spanish-language weekly. In 2010 ''Excélsior'' had a circulation of 51,000. It covers Orange County's growing Hispanic community, which now numbers over a million. Julio Saenz is the editor and general manager. In 1994, Anderson was named publisher of Freedom’s second largest newspaper, the ''Colorado Springs Gazette''. Managing editor Tonnie Katz was named to replace Anderson as editor of the ''Register''. In 1999, Threshie became chairman of the board of Freedom Communication and Anderson returned to the ''Register'' as publisher and
chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...
. Ken Brusic was named vice president of content and executive editor in April 2002.


2000s: Schism and bankruptcy

In 2003, a family schism led to the sale of a majority interest in Freedom Communications to investors led by the
Blackstone Group Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. It was founded in 1985 as a mergers and acquisitions firm by Peter Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman, who had previously worked together at Lehman ...
and Providence Equity Partners. Through a stock arrangement, the Hoiles family descendants retained control of the board. The private equity firms received a management fee off the company’s gross revenue. 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 Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...
. The ''Register'' 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 had cut the ''Register's'' editorial staff by 10 percent and had frozen 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. He came from the ''East Valley Tribune'', a Freedom-owned suburban paper in the Phoenix area. In June 2008,
KTLA KTLA (channel 5) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship station of The CW. It is the largest directly owned property of the network's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, and is ...
, ''
The Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper in the U.S. and the larges ...
'' and
Fox News The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conservatism in the United States, conservative List of news television channels, news and political commentary Television stati ...
reported that the ''Register'' had begun a one-month trial of outsourcing some layout and copy-editing work to India to save costs. The trial was not deemed a success, and editing returned to Register In spring of 2009,
Freedom Communications Freedom Communications, Inc. was an American media conglomerate that operated daily and weekly newspapers, websites and mobile applications and television stations, as well as ''Coast Magazine'' and other specialty publications. Headquartered at ...
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. In September 2009, a column written by sports columnist Mark Whicker caused controversy. In the column, 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 criticism in blogs such as Deadspin, who called it "the single worst piece of journalism ever committed on this page", and ''
The Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers p ...
''.


2010s

On July 25, 2012, ''The Orange County Register'' and six other papers were purchased by 2100 Trust LLC. The papers continued to operate under the Freedom Communications name. In December the ''Register'' changed its logo and branding, dropping "''The''" in favor of ''Orange County Register''. 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." On August 19, 2013, the ''Long Beach Register'' was launched as an edition of ''The Orange County Register'' serving the
Long Beach, California Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...
, 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 The ''Press-Telegram'' is a paid daily newspaper published in Long Beach, California. Coverage area for the ''Press-Telegram'' includes Long Beach, Lakewood, Signal Hill, Artesia, Bellflower, Cerritos, Compton, Downey, Hawaiian Gardens, L ...
''. In addition, on January 20, 2014, '' The Press-Enterprise'' became an edition of ''The Orange County Register'' while maintaining coverage of the
Inland Empire The Inland Empire (commonly abbreviated as the IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County and Or ...
. 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 Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles and sometimes abbreviated as LA County, is the most populous county in the United States, with 9,663,345 residents estimated in 2023. Its population is greater than that of 40 individua ...
. It was the first time since the '' Herald-Examiner'' folded on November 1, 1989, that a main competitor to the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' was launched, this time intended to be "as local as one edition can be for the entire county." 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. The ''Long Beach Register'' became a Sunday-only publication in June 2014, and ceased publication in December 2014. 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. 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. 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 Tribune Publishing Company (briefly Tronc, Inc.) is an American newspaper print and online media publishing company. The company, which was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May 2021, has a portfolio that includes the ''Chicago Tribune'', t ...
because it would create a newspaper monopoly in both Orange and Riverside Counties..On March 21, 2016,
Digital First Media MNG Enterprises, Inc., Trade name, doing business as Digital First Media and MediaNews Group, is a Denver, Colorado, United States–based newspaper publisher owned by Alden Global Capital. As of May 2021, it owns over 100 newspapers and 200 ass ...
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. 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 Avenue, Santa Ana. The new headquarters opened April 24, 2017. 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.


Editorial stances

The ''Register'' was notable for its generally
libertarian Libertarianism (from ; or from ) is a political philosophy that holds freedom, personal sovereignty, and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians believe that the concept of freedom is in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according ...
-leaning editorial page. It generally supported
free market In economics, a free market is an economic market (economics), system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of ...
s and social liberties, though at least some on the editorial board said they would not call it libertarian. Although it sometimes supported Republican politicians and positions, it was the largest newspaper in the country to have opposed the
Iraq War The Iraq War (), also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion by a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition, which ...
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 World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. It also opposed Proposition 8 in 2008, which proposed to define the word "marriage" in the California Constitution to mean between a man and a woman definitively. 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 The Southern California News Group (SCNG), formerly the San Gabriel Valley News Group and the Los Angeles News Group, is an umbrella group of local daily newspapers published in the greater Los Angeles area of southern California by Digital Fir ...
on regional and national issues.


Other publications

In addition to publishing ''The Orange County Register'',
Southern California News Group The Southern California News Group (SCNG), formerly the San Gabriel Valley News Group and the Los Angeles News Group, is an umbrella group of local daily newspapers published in the greater Los Angeles area of southern California by Digital Fir ...
publishes ''OC Family'' magazine, ''Coast'' magazineuntil shutting down that magazine in 2020, and the following affiliated weeklies: * ''Anaheim Bulletin'' of
Anaheim Anaheim ( ) is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States, part of the Greater Los Angeles area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 346,824, making it the most populous city in Orange County, the tenth-most ...
* ''Coastal Current'' (North and South editions) of
Newport Beach Newport Beach is a coastal city of about 85,000 in southern Orange County, California, United States. Located about southeast of downtown Los Angeles, Newport Beach is known for its sandy beaches. The city's harbor once supported maritime indu ...
* '' North County News Tribune'' of Fullerton * ''Irvine World News'' of Irvine * ''Laguna Woods Globe'' of Laguna Woods * ''Saddleback Valley News'' of Lake Forest/
Mission Viejo Mission Viejo ( ; language change, corruption of ; ) is a Commuter town, commuter city in the Saddleback Valley in Orange County, California, United States. Mission Viejo is considered one of the largest Planned community, master-planned commu ...
* ''The Wave'' of Huntington Beach


Online content

On April 1, 2013, the ''Orange County Register'' began providing its online content through a metered
paywall A paywall is a method of restricting access to content (media), content, with a purchase or a subscription business model, paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their website ...
. 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. 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.OC Register to charge for unlimited access to digital news to help support local journalism
Retrieved July 18, 2018


See also

* ''
OC Weekly ''OC Weekly'' was a free alternative weekly paper distributed in Orange County and Long Beach, California. It was founded in September 1995 by Will Swaim, who acted as editor and publisher until 2007. The paper was distributed at coffee shops, ...
''


References


External links

*
Orange County Register Online Education
(online education information portal)
OCExcelsior.com
(sister publication)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Orange County Register, The Daily newspapers published in Greater Los Angeles Mass media in Orange County, California Digital First Media Pulitzer Prize–winning newspapers Companies based in Santa Ana, California Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015 Newspapers established in 1905 Newspapers published in California 1905 establishments in California Freedom Communications Libertarian publications