Friday, July 24, 2009

Are things looking up in Orange County?


Are things looking up in the Orange County, CA, newspaper world? The publisher of the Orange County Register says the newspaper will have double-digit operating margins this year.


"There is zero chance the Register will close its doors," says publisher Terry Horne. "Those people who say newspapers are dead are wrong. What's happening is newspapers are changing. Those that don't, will die." RE WEB SUBSCRIPTIONS: "At this time we don't plan to charge for online. I'm certainly interested in these experiments going on at other newspapers that plan to charge for some or all of the content on their newspaper websites. We'll have to determine if it's the right strategy for the Register."

Click on the headline to read more from publisher Home this week.

So, how about some comment from former BJ staffers John Dunphy and Rick Reiff who are now in Orange County: Last we heard, Dunphy was an editor of the Register and Reiff was editor of the Orange County Business Journal.

1 comment:

John Dunphy said...

Hi everyone: It's been interesting being here of late. I have so far survived three rounds of layoffs over the last 18 months. In the months ahead the corp that owns the register (freedom communications) will restructure it's debt and will essentially let bankers take control of the corp. how that will play out is unknown..but the bankers will form a new board of directors and new CEO. As for me..I'm a local news team leader...responsible for daily filings to the web first, newspaper second and I'm responsible for 4 weekly community papers that we publish on thursdays.