Orange County (Calif.) Register owner files for bankruptcy protection

[Newsjock]

Source: Associated Press

Freedom Communications Inc., owner of the Orange County Register, has filed for bankruptcy, and the newspaper's publisher said he plans to lead a bid to purchase the troubled company.

Freedom filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court's Central District of California, the Santa Ana, California-based Register reported Sunday.

Rich Mirman, Freedom's chief executive and publisher, and other local investors plan to reorganize the company's finances and assume ownership.

... The company concentrated on its print product at a time when other newspapers were focusing online. The new owners doubled the Register's newsroom staff, added new sections, bought the Riverside Press-Enterprise and launched a new paper, the Los Angeles Register, which was seen as a potential competitor to the Los Angeles Times but ceased publication after just five months.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article42144867.html

[jalan48]

1. The Register has been a right wing paper for decades.

I hate to see the workers lose their jobs but politically, the paper sucked.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. Couldn't happen to a nicer paper....My father loathed the Register and I carry on the tradition.

Republican rag. May the jobs be retained under a new owner with a new and refreshing outlook....

[forest444]

3. Coming soon:

¡El Registro de Orange!

That'll get their blood boiling.

[DBoon]

4. Nicknamed the "Orange County Red Baiter"

by those of us behind the orange curtain

[forest444]

5. Ironic, isn't it?

The Register was brought down by a hedge fund asset stripper - exactly the kind of people many of the more delusional OC Republicans admire (I lived in Newport Beach for several years in the late '90s and early aughts).

I first began to suspect the Register's days were numbered during the Clinton impeachment melodrama, as it happens. Several neighbors and acquaintances of mine at time (real John Birch types) expressed their disappointment - if not disgust - with the Register because, to their mind, the paper had refused to become a battle horse for impeachment.

Or, I should say, execution - such was the hatred they felt for Bill Clinton.

Now, these are the same people whose $500,000 houses became million-dollar houses during Clinton's second term, and whose stock portfolios and family trusts doubled or tripled. But all they could think about was the Mexicans, and how, Reagan notwithstanding, a Republican president would surely get rid of them (ha!).

Except their landscapers and nannies, of course.

Anyway, these news certainly brought back memories. The Orange County coastline must surely be one of the most beautiful stretches of land in the country. Not every memory was perfectly perfect, sure; but I'll never forget it.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Invisible Hand of the Free Market(TM) at work ! nt

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027232461

[question everything]

7. Sad. I still like to have my print daily every morning

Regardless of the paper sad to see how print journalism is losing ground. LA Times and the Chicago Tribune are not doing that well, either.