The Orange County Register's ill-starred Squeeze OC, a faux alternative weekly that, in the words of Weekly managing editor Rich Kane "only retarded frat boys could love," just died its second death.
Back in August 2007, the magazine, which only lasted two years, went web-only. Now, as of today, Squeeze OC doesn't even have a website. Although the Register hasn't made any official announcement, we were clued into this breaking story by a former staffer who said we could find confirmation that the website was about to go dark by clicking on Magda Liszewska's "Stay Tuned" blog.
But when we tried to click to Squeeze OC's website, it wasn't there. Instead, we were greeted by a message that the website had moved to a new location. Check out www.squeezeoc.com and see for yourself--you'll be redirected to the Register's online entertainment section. We had to do a Google search to find Magda's Feb. 29 posting in which she told readers how to find her blog in the future.
"Just another reminder that the blog disappears from here soon since the
whole site is going down, but it’s not going away," Magda wrote. "Keep reading at
http://staytuned.blogspot.com. Coming soon, the review of “New Amsterdam”
and interview with its star. Stay tuned and thanks for reading."
And thank you, Squeeze OC, for all the memories. Like those fascinating stories about couples who fire paint balls at each other, handy guides to expensive cars for OC's spoiled brats, and this typically fawning puff piece about a local hack who sits next to me at work.
March 4, 2008 14:12
Gosh...you guys are mean!
March 4, 2008 14:27
Ouch. Bitter, party of one. It sounds like you're gloating over their demise. Have you no respect for the dead?
March 4, 2008 15:42
No, they have no respects for the dead.
Nor any memory for there own recent past, especially the part where phhhh a big media corporation (how 'alternative' is THAT?) swallowed them up, and forced many of their former colleagues to walk the plank.
Laugh at other today, but tomorrow the axes may fall on your necks.
March 4, 2008 16:28
As reported by Orange County's "real" alternative newspaper.
March 4, 2008 16:30
Hi Beezling:
Normally I don't bother responding to other people's comments on this blog, but seeing as how you profess to know so much about OC Weekly, you shouldn't need to be told that it has always been our job to be obnoxious, especially when it comes to covering the foibles--like Squeeze OC--of the local mainstream press. Personally, I know folks who worked at both Squeeze OC and the OC Post and and unlike you, they have a sense of humor and don't view our ocassional rants as personal attacks.
Look, times are tough at the Register. The stuff I've been writing for OC Register Death Watch--the name's a gallows-humor-style joke, by the way--is motivated by a very real concern for the health of that institution. So don't waste your breath complaining about it with anonymous commentary. If anything, thank OC Weekly for exposing a process--namely the Singleton/Register content-sharing deal--while there may still be time to stop it from taking away your job.
By the way, OC Weekly has always been owned by a big media corporation and that corporation has always been called Village Voice Media. The ownership of that company recently changed hands. Nobody was forced to leave this paper; they did so of their own choosing.
Thanks for commenting. We love attention.
March 4, 2008 16:54
Oh, and Beezling? Get your own damn nickname. Nobody's fooled or confused except you.
March 4, 2008 18:44
Glad to see you're back, Nicky. Got so busy talking to your San Francisco-based Orange County reporter that I can't remember whether I responded to your non-response to my original letter, if you can follow my meaning there.
In any case, you'd said I'd had not pointed out one specific error in your Death Watch stories. I felt that I had and that you'd ignored it. So let me repeat. I'd still like you to run a phhhh correction for this one mistake:
The episode you reported as fact in which Ken Brusic told Barry Koltnow he would not have a job is simply and utterly false. Barry was not at the meeting, Ken did not say any such thing.
If like the MSM you love to mock you cared about running stories that you had absolute faith in, you wouldn't have run that bit without a named source and/or comment from Barry or Ken. But...you ran with the sensational rumor, and in this case, because it's absolutely false, you were 100 percent wrong.
Now I know that your job as corporate tools of Village Voice Media Inc. is to get all pissy with the local media, and good on ya for that. Sometimes -- sometimes! -- it's appropriate. But it should also be something you know for a fact, and not a rumor that could potential hurt someone with premature reports of the loss of their job.
Let's stop there for now. I'll be interested to see if you give a damn enough about journalism to actually keep reporting this one incident enough to discover that you were wrong -- and that you need to run a correction and a public apology to Barry K.
As for the whole content-sharing deal, you're mostly reporting rumors there, too, and if you like, I'd be happy to point you in the right direction on that as well.
Your pal -- and Vicky's boy Alex's too!
Beezling
PS. I might also know that I have a perfectly fine sense of humor, and that if you weren't so thin-skinned about being called out for making the occasional mistake in your stories, you might see that I'm sending you up, taking the piss, having a laff with all this biz. But you'd have to have a sense of humor yourself for that, which remains to be seen....
March 4, 2008 19:01
Beezling:
No sense of humor? I just called Gustavo Arellano a "local hack" in this very blog entry, even though we're pals. (Actually, he told me to call him that when he did me the favor of excavating the web to find Squeeze OC's fawning interview of him, which is no longer available online).
Anyways...based on what you're saying, you must have been at the same meeting as my sources and remembered things differently as far as what was said with regards to Koltnow. Or perhaps you weren't there and are, like me, trusting your own sources. However, after I received your initial letter, I double-checked the info with my sources and they insisted that the remark I reported did in fact happen. I'm still waiting for Koltnow, Brusic and Horne to get back to me on this.
Here's the deal: if you would like to shed your cloak of confidentiality and ever-changing codenames, simply call me or otherwise arrange for me to speak to you on the record or off. I'd gladly listen to anything you have to say and run any correction or apology that's merited by the facts.
Once again, I'd love to talk to you--you know who I am and where to find me. I'll be waiting for your call. Just don't call me Nicky. Only my wife gets away with that.
March 4, 2008 20:46
Beezling=Tony Saavedra.
March 5, 2008 09:37
Nicholas -- is that better? -- it's not a matters of me remembering differently, it's a matters of me remembering and reporting the facts, and checking them with multiple source including some of the people who aren't returning your calls. You're phhh at a disadvantage because you weren't there and you've trusted unnamed sources who may or may have an ax to grind.
People don't care to return your calls because in the past on-the-record quotes usually get printed with the OCW's unique spins and commentery on them. Why not just e-mail them the graf in question -- the one I've noted as 100 percent wrong -- and ask them to e-mail back with a yes or no answer to the simple question of "Is this statement accurate." Maybe then you'll gets an on-the-record response, if only one word -- no -- to the questions which so fars you've only got the false/incorrect word of an unnamed source on.
Edifyingly yours,
Angry Register staffer
PS: You want me to help you figure out what else you've gotten wrong on your whole content-sharing conspiracy theory? Just ask, I'm here for YOU!
March 5, 2008 09:42
former Register reporter=clearlys out of the loop
March 5, 2008 09:58
Do you thinks the fact that you arbitrerily changed my name from Beezling to "Angry Register staffer" speaks phhh well for your journalistic ethics and accuracy? How do you know I'm angry? A Register staffer? Is common practices you for to change the facts to suits your own purposes? Isn't this how you got into this mess in the firsts place?
Inquiring minds want to know!
Beeeeeeezling
March 5, 2008 10:44
Beezling:
I've done some serious soul searching after reading your comments and have come to the conclusion that yes, I prefer being called Nicholas, not Nicky. Thanks for asking.
March 5, 2008 10:56
Beezling AKA UR Wrong AKA Too Much of a Pussy to Bother Sticking to One Pseudonym: Dunno what joker changed your name (and doesn't that show a sense of humor on our part?), but spare us your false sense of seeking justice. Better yet: spare us your falseness. We don't mind anonymous cowards, but we don't tolerate anonymous cowards who don't have the balls to stick to one name (honestly, I liked you more when you were using the names of various Register hacks) or use the name of martyr Gary Webb in vain. So tell you what we're gonna do: if you have any other critiques for any of us, howzabout emailing them? Y'know, so we know who you are? Because otherwise, you're done here. Gracias, and don't let Singleton take your job!
March 5, 2008 13:44
I'm looking for a good plum marmalade recipe? Any tips?
March 5, 2008 14:57
What? No more SqueezedOC? Then will who OC Weekly model it's next site redesign after? Yeah! Who? Err. Snort. Yeah. I gotta go pop my ass pimples now.
March 5, 2008 15:08
Hey Reg anon--before throwing jabs at our website, try upgrading your site so it takes a bit less than a minute to upload and doesn't habitually forget Mickadeit's column, will ya?
March 5, 2008 15:21
Hey Gus, I was wonderings when the shrillest and most thin-skinned of my Weekly compadres would phhh chime in! Goods to hear from ya, friend-o!
Here's where I'll leave it -- assuming you let this post go up and don't blocks it like you did before, Gus. Behind all the joking and insults and digs I've been throwing at you is this simple point: you've made factual mistake in your stories on the OCR and if you have any journalistics integrity you'll stop reporting things you can't prove and you'll correct the errors you've already made.
Quite seriously, that's the only points this phhh gal has ever had in all of this chitchat.
So let's see if you post this one and let's see if you take up the challenge listed above.
Your pals,
John Hughes, Phil Garlington, UR Wrong, Beeeeezling and the martyr (seriously??) Gary Webb, Joey Ramone, Oh, and Angry Bitter Register staff too.
March 5, 2008 15:31
Hey Jonesy/Beeeeezling/UR WRong etc...
I made sure this one made it in. You're welcome.
I also took you up on your challenge to contact Koltnow directly. This time, he responded. You may see a correction or clarification on that part of my story soon.
On a personal note, I'd like to say that the verdict around here is that you indeed have a sense of humor, just not the one you think you have. There's not much funny, to me at least, in a journalist using the name of Gary Webb, a friend of mine who committed suicide, as a phony email address.
Seriously, Beezling? Gwebb@deadmessenger.com?
Wow, so you know I wrote a book about him called Kill the Messenger. I get it. Good one. Yeah, journalists who commit suicide are fucking hilarious. You've got a sense of humor alright, but it's a pretty fucking stupid one if you ask me. And aren't you the person who insists on this very page that the Weekly has no respect for the dead?
Adios, friend-o!
March 5, 2008 16:34
Thin-skinned--ha! That's all you, chula--someone who can't be bothered to put a real name behind her sockpuppetry and thus resorts to cutesy hypocrisy. Keep up the comments--we just might allow them!
March 5, 2008 16:38
Vicky's boy?
I'm not even Vicky's man.
Still, nice to know someone read Yellow Fever's Secondary Infections.
March 5, 2008 17:50
*I also took you up on your challenge to contact Koltnow directly. This time, he responded. You may see a correction or clarification on that part of my story soon.*
Wasn't thats the point all along? Glad to see "Tony" convinced you to do the rights thing.
March 6, 2008 18:12
As a former Register staffer, it saddens me to know what my former colleagues are going through with round after round of layoffs.
I know it must be difficult. And it must be incredibly frustrating to watch good people be sliced away while bad ideas such as OC Post flush millions of dollars down the drain. I don't even like Shakespeare, and I cringed when I saw those commercials somehow implying that you could take classic literature and condense it without loss.
But at the same time, that is in many ways a perfect metaphor for what is happening at the Register. Stories become blurbs, without any real depth, context or even writing. So I don't even notice when I don't read the paper for a day or two ... it's like skipping a snack instead of missing a meal.
And the metaphor carries to the staff, too. Younger reporters are being asked to do more than ever, with less support from editors, writing coaches and even senior reporters than ever before. That shows, too.
You can't cut Shakespeare to the bone and still have Shakespeare, you can't cut news stories to the bone and make them relevant, and you can't cut the staff of a newspaper to the bone and have it continue to play the vital role a newspaper must in society.
And the idea that you can slide stories from a Long Beach paper into the Orange County paper ... well, it kind of defeats the idea of having a local paper, doesn't it?
Does that mean great journalism isn't happening? Not at all. Great work on the jail beating deaths, and the story on the wrestler with Downs Syndrome was incredible.
But those pieces, that work, are too few and far between.
This argument here, now, about what was or wasn't said at a meeting is worthless, really. Whether Barry Koltnow stays -- I hope he does, he's a great guy -- is irrelevant to the bottom line of what the story reported: The paper is a ghost of itself, and an ever-shrinking staff is fighting to avoid being beheaded ...
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."
There's some smart people at the Register, and an army of talented people. I hope they avoid the prophecy.
Jonathan Volzke, 1989-2002