​Officials from Irvine-based Freedom Communications, whose flagship newspaper is the Orange County Register, told employees of Arizona's East Valley Tribune newspapers that they will cease operations on Dec. 31.

Freedom's official announcement is contained in this company news release. It's also backed into in the second paragraph of this Register blog post, which leads instead with their corporate overlords saying they expect to see a profit by 2012.

Perhaps they are applying the Bob Dylan Law of Economics, which holds that if you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose.

​First, a copy-paste:

Please contact USA today and demand that they provide the readers with info about January 26 trial. If they refuse, report them to FCC, as defrauding the public in connection to elections

That's right, folks: On her blog, Dr. Orly Taitz says that USA Today would be committing a crime ignoring her.

It's part of Taitz's new campaign to annoy random reporters across the country.

Perhaps this art photo by Nick Gaines is an example of the porn the newspaper company is trying to hide.

​Orange County Register business writer Mary Ann Milbourn boldly got out front of the story about her corporate overlords at Irvine-based Freedom Communications being accused of trying to keep documents away from their creditors.

"Freedom Communications Inc. is throwing up roadblocks in its bankruptcy case by designating more than 1 million documents as confidential, including a Dodgers baseball game schedule and poetry, said the unsecured creditors committee in a court filing in Delaware today," Milbourn blogged.

She posted that on the Register site at 3:38 p.m. Friday, and by Monday the same report had been picked up by many of Freedom's 32 other daily newspapers, 77 weeklies and other publications and eight television stations around the country. But having a newspaper that hates secrecy being owned by a company trying to keep its operations secret was too much for outside journos to resist. So they took a look at the creditors' filing themselves, and what did they also find among the million documents Freedom was hiding?

Pornography.

Who's Minding the Mint?

​In case you've been living in a...wait a sec, let's just not go there...uh,if you haven't been reading the newspaper or reading the internets for the past few days, you might have missed the dumbest fucking decision probably ever made by an editor anywhere on the planet. Wait make that three editors: Keith Sharon, Todd Harmonson and David Bean. Yesterday MSNBC's Keith Olbermann denounced them by name for reading and approving a sports column by Mark Whicker which detailed all the sporting news that kidnapping, rape and decades-long backyard trailer imprisonment victim Jaycee Dugard missed while she was locked up by the psychopath who abducted her when she was 11 years old.

You can tell simply by my summary of Whicker's column that it is the type of dumb idea that might come into your head after huffing gasoline for several hours, or if you simply woke up with the singular ambition of pissing off everyone who can read, thereby risking your career in the pursuit of neither being funny nor forgivable. But it's actually worse than that.  But wait, don't  take my word for it. Let's let Whicker speak for himself here. Remember, what you are about to read apparently passed through the trusted hands of no less than three presumably experienced and college-educated editors.

After the jump, read excerpts from Whicker's column and also a video of Olbermann's rant.

Is a "for sale" sign coming to the Orange County Register's Santa Ana complex?

​Not that long ago, the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times were embroiled in a bitter circulation battle that resulted in huge resources being pumped into this region, competing "hyper-local" community papers popping up like weeds and both papers reaping the spoils of some of the highest advertising rates in the country.

My, how times have changed. With the daily print newspaper industry in major retreat mode, the Times has left only a skeleton crew at its Orange County headquarters on Sunflower Avenue in Costa Mesa. While owner Sam Zell has yet to carry through with a previously revealed desire to snatch up the Register--which just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week--the Times will soon be distributing the Register and they already jointly produce a weekly advertising supplement.

As the air of uncertainty hangs over the newsroom on Sunflower and its Register counterpart on Grand Avenue in Santa Ana like a stale elephant fart, wags get to talking and surmising and rumor-izing. One that's getting some heat in both dens has the Register selling its iconic building on Grand and moving into leased space at the now roomy Times Sunflower facility, which would include use of the Times' state-of-the-art press.

​Their numbers have dwindled. Their pay has been cut. They're often strapped with bean-counter goals devoid of editorial meaning. For years, they were forced to work in the same building as Gordon Dillow, and they've constantly watched their corporate bosses invent new ways to lose bundles of precious cash on mind-numbingly stupid ideas.

Despite that mess, The Orange County Register still has reporters who are kicking ass. Consider Teri Sforza, for example. On Monday, I nearly choked on my morning coffee while reading Sfora's story about a new plan at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to "increase employee pensions by 25 percent."

Yes, that's right. Never mind the shitty economy, layoffs, furloughs, foreclosures and that everyone else in government is trying to reduce spending: Bureaucrats at the Met want to spend an additional $70 million so that retiring employees receive 62.5 percent of their income every year for the rest of their lives. The move will increase the agency's unfunded employee liability to almost $500 million, according to Sforza.

Fiscal mismanagement in Southern California is as commonplace as a traffic jam on the San Diego Freeway. But Sforza deftly points out the other component of the Met's plan: hire public-relations experts to spin the spending as--I kid you not--a way to save money. Indeed, her article notes that the Met's spin doctors at Marathon Communications are arguing that spending $70 million actually saves, drum roll, $21 million.

Four minus six is now apparently 22.

Meanwhile, the Met and its PR guns refused to let Sforza see the agency documents outlining their proposed spending plan until after it has been formally approved. That action is, of course, illegal. California has a public-records law that requires open, honest government, and Sforza has found another warped bureaucracy that needs cleansing.

Read Sforza's story HERE.

--R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

​
With the Orange County Register's parent company Freedom Communications of Irvine confirming it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (something deemed inevitable in Nick Schou's Navel Gazing item yesterday), one would assume this to be a financial matter.

But according to several readers of similar reports on the Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal and even the Register web sites, Freedom's fall is purely political.

Now if all those readers could just agree on which politics they mean.

FishBowlLA.com connects the dots today between indicted Broadcom co-founder Henry Nicholas III, the Orange County Register's parent company and the "PR guy" for both of them:

Sitrick & Co. does PR for Freedom Communications, Inc.

Mike Sitrick is also the PR guy for Dr. Henry Nicholas III, the former Broadcom exec facing multiple federal criminal charges in connection with alleged stock options fraud and drug offenses in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.

The Orange County Register is owned by Freedom and is covering Nicholas' criminal case.

The post goes on to quote from Bethany McClane's November 2008 Vanity Fair piece "Dr. Nicholas and Mr. Hyde," where the story's subject famously conceded, ""I am a media-relations nightmare!" Good thing he's got a solid PR guy working for both him and the paper-of-record for his trial!

UPDATED WITH CONFIRMATION, DETAILS FROM REGISTER REPORT...

It will be was announced today that all Orange County Register employees will be subjected to a 5 percent pay cut, an insider tells the Weekly. effective July 13.

This comes on top of mandatory employee furloughs--or unpaid, one-week vacations--being required every quarter. Translated into wages, that action represented a 10 percent decrease in wages.

At last check, "Orange County's news source" was mum about pay cuts.

"Orange County's news source" confirmed the cuts were being made on their business blog Monday evening.

Not sure which stage of grief this falls under, but as the initial reports of Michael Jackson's death were coming out, what are assumed to be Orange County Register and/or Freedom Communications insiders were linking the King of Pop's departure from Earth with Freedom CEO Scott Flanders' departure for the CEO post at Playboy Enterprises. This all played out in the comments section of this OC Register Death Watch post on Navel Gazing:

Just Beat It at 6:13 p.m. Thursday: A story just crossing the wires out of West Hollywood states that Michael Jackson misinterpreted a statement made by Scott Flanders said off the record during the Folio interview that he welcomed the challenge of leading the King of Pop (who we all know as Hugh Hefner to his many blond girlfriends in the mansion Grotto community). Michael took that comment to believe that Flanders was about to screw up his gig. He knew if the black thumb of Flanders was going to manage him, he'd might as well check out sooner rather than later. Rest in Peace, Michael. At least you died fast. Working with Flanders would have been a slow miserable death.

Tito Jackson at 7:42 p.m.: As Scotty says on the company website....its about transformation.

Scott Flanders, just missing the pipe, robe and Depends.

Scott Flanders is the president and CEO of Irvine-based, Orange County Register-owner Freedom Communications until July 1, when he becomes the first non-Hefner CEO of Playboy Enterprises. Folio, a magazine/online network for magazine and e-network professionals, did a breezy Q&A with Flanders recently, and what's interesting is what the Money Bunny did not say about his time at Freedom.
 
But first, in light of the possibly fatal woes being experienced at Register/Freedom, it's interesting to learn Flanders is still optimistic about print.

Burl Osborne

A Register Orange County Business News blog post that went up last night crows that it learned from "four inside sources" Monday that Burl Osborne will be named chief executive officer of the paper's parent company Freedom Communications Inc. of Irvine when the board meets later this week.

But close readers "OC Register Death Watch" posts on the Weekly's staff news Navel Gazing blog already knew that--15 days earlier. Here's what Death Watcher "davey threshire" wrote in the comments section at 4:59 p.m. June 1, under the post headlined "Will Freedom Take Playboy  Down With the Register?":

Osborne will succeed Scott Flanders, who leaves Freedom at the end of the month to become CEO of Playboy Enterprises Inc.--something you also read first in the comments to another Navel Gazing OC Death Watch post.

Eleven days after "davey threshire" broke the news that Osborne would become CEO, "Chuck E Cheese" whipped up a bio dripping with sarcasm in a Death Watch comments.

There is one thing we can take solace in here at the Weekly: post something online about infighting at the Orange County Register and its Freedom Communications parent and it's sure to generate comments--from those doing the infighting. Our Publisher to Register Employees: Let Them Eat Hawaiian Bread, March 9, drew a respectable eight comments. Source Says Furloughs Will Be Forced on Register Employees, March 12, got another six. A dozen more chimed in on Insiders Take Potshots at Freedom Communications, April 24.

But Battle Between Register Execs and Peons Takes a Spanish Turn has been the gift that keeps giving since its April 16 debut, offering a conversation in the comments section that continued as of an hour ago. There have been 35 comments there in all, which--no--are not Armenian genocide or Nick Adenhart numbers. But it's the quality of the discussion, the twists it has taken over the last month and the insights it provides on the Reg/Freedom exec/associate mindset that has proven delicious. It may even be providing some news, if the rumor about Freedom president and CEO Scott Flanders fleeing to Playboy magazine are true. We'll apparently find out when Freedom shareholders meet Thursday.

To get you up to speed on the Battle back-and-forth, the current thread concerns whether members of the family of Santa Ana Register founder R.C. Hoiles who have retained ownership shares in Freedom Communications care about employees, also known as "associates." Poor spelling, grammar and uppercase/lowercase infractions are left intact for authenticity.

Michael Volpe's Media & Marketing column in the current Orange County Business Journal--which I'd link you to but it's a pay site and I'm not that kind of girl--reports that the Orange County Register is launching promotions aimed at countering all the bad news about newspapers, which includes Warren Buffet writing off the entire industry, the Boston Globe's potential demise, predictions of more defaults among dailies, the White House rejection of an industry bailout and, of course, the Reggie's own forced furloughs, confusing buy-outs, heart-breaking layoffs, free-falling circulation, in-house sniping between peons and the suits and so on. 

GODDAMN, that's a lot of bad news to counter! But the Reg and its Irvine-based Freedom Communications' overlords believe their savior is the "Delivering More Than Newspapers" campaign. And, no, that is not a reference to the Register's former newspaper carrier Thi Dinh Bui, who authorities caught up with in Garden Grove in 2004 after witnesses claimed he beat, tortured and starved prisoners at a re-education camp near Hanoi from 1978 to 1981. It's a wonder he hadn't yet risen to publisher.

Data released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations at the end April was sad but unsurprising: over the previous six months, circulation at the Orange County Register of Santa Ana fell 7.9 percent to 230,877 for Monday through Friday editions and 3.7 percent to 300,273 on Sundays. But a Bay Area press club's tracking of circulation erosion at the state's top five newspapers over the previous decade was even more stark for Irvine-based Freedom Communications' flagship newspaper. Monday-Friday circulation at the Register was 367,003 during the same period in 1999, so the loss of 136,126 copies of the fish wrap to 230,877 by 2009 represented a whopping 37.1 percent drop.

It's unclear whether those steep declines are represented in the readership formula the Register uses to claim on the ocregister.com "products/rates" page that the print edition's daily readership is 787,798 and 1,020,913 on Sundays. The same site's "advertise" page boasts, "Over 1.2 million adults have read OC Register print or online in the past week."

Clockwork feels obliged to point out the latest comments left on our recent blog posts about the continuing turmoil within the Grand Avenue headquarters of the Orange County Register.

Horne

To recap, it all started with our March 9 "Publisher to Register Employees: Let Them Eat Hawaiian Bread," which detailed the different messages publisher Terry Horne was giving to editorial employees (your salaries are frozen, your colleagues have been let go and you have to work harder) vs. top executives (we're partying hearty on Maui!). That was followed March 12 with "Source Says Furloughs Will Be Forced on Register Employees," which upped Clockwork's batting average when it comes to items that actually come true. Finally, to point readers to various comments to those posts, came March 30's "Insiders Take Potshots at Freedom Communications."

Where we'd left off with these was with Freedom employees blasting similar trips among the corporate suits in the Bahamas, president and CEO Scott N. Flanders earning $5 million while being exempt from mandatory employee furloughs aimed at saving $3.5 million and other executive perks seemingly spared the budget axe.

Flanders

R.C. Hoiles, who in this instance is not the Register's long-dead founder but an "ad gal" with a Freedom paper that is not the Santa Ana flagship, comments this week on the furlough post that even if Flanders did take a furlough, his hard landing would be cushioned by the compensation he receives sitting on six corporate boards. She calls Flanders "a hack and a loser," a description seconded by "Hank Paulsen," who nominates Flanders for the CEO position at General Motors before thinking better of it. "He wouldn't have time, too many boards to be on, as his own ship is turning round and round and round and round and round......."

The latest vitriol is even more intense in the comments section of the insiders post.

Author, sociologist and working-class advocate Barbara Ehrenreich recently spoke about being confronted by a foe who accused her of engaging in class warfare, to which Ehrenreich responded that's absolutely true but her side in not the one that started the war.

Who knew class-warfare skirmishes could be erupting in the libertarian-built halls of the Orange County Register and its Irvine-based parent company, Freedom Communications?

A Navel Gazing post from three weeks ago about mixed-messages employees received at the financially troubled Register continues to generate some interesting comments from apparent insiders.

An insider confirms what until now had been a rumor whispered around the water coolers at the Orange County Register: employees will be subjected to furloughs in the next quarter. Now the  rumor being whispered in front of the vending machine is that the unpaid, one-week vacations will be mandatory for employees every quarter thereafter for the immediate future.

Looking at a pay stub and doing some quick arithmetic, my Cleared Throat figured the loss in wages represents just shy of a 10 percent pay cut.

It remains unclear whether the furloughs also apply to the executive suites.

Like scores of others in the print media business (we know who we are), Orange County Register employees are reeling from diminished 401Ks, a freeze on raises and increased workloads brought on by a company initiative to boost its web presence. They were not exactly cheered up last week when publisher Terry Horne (pictured) informed employees that "sometimes, life isn't fair" as he revealed the cost-cutting strategies would remain for at least another year.

Horne let that drop right after telling reporters their "hits" on ocregister.com are up 100 percent from last year--but that they need 250 percent more hits per scribe. The implication was everyone needs to work harder for no more money or comp time while they are watching their retirement savings plunge. Thus, you can imagine how some Regerinos took just after seeing this posted on the company intranet:

Feb. 6 - OCRC associates held a Celebration of Success breakfast today at the Pelican Hill Resort in Newport Coast for the Advertising Sales and Sales Operations divisions. Associates were recognized for performance in 2008; those that exemplified outstanding achievements in the following categories: customer service, teamwork, high performance, sales goal achievement, accuracy and innovation.

Winners were honored with the following distinctions: Champion's Club, Publisher's Club 100 and Publisher's Council. Champion's Club winners received gift cards and certificates, while Club 100 winners received a commemorative gift. Those who achieved Publisher's Council status are invited on a trip to Maui at the Hyatt Regency Resort and Spa in May.

The message went on to name the advertising employees who made the Champion's Club and Publisher's Club 100, as well as the lucky 18 Publisher's Council honorees heading to Maui. Besides the indignity of reading this in light of what editorial employees had just been were later told, the Grand Avenue gremlin who passed this along was miffed at the tony Newport Coast resort setting for the ad-travaganza, coupled with the costs of Hawaiian airfares and lodging, mere weeks after other staffers were told there would be no company Christmas party.

Orange County Register: A tip-of-the-knit cap back at the Reggie, for acknowledging Weekly news breaker R. Scott Moxley's 2001 cover story on a nurse's allegations that famed Dr. Steven Kooshian dispensed watered-down AIDS meds. At the time, Kooshian, other media and Orange County's gay community tried to discredit Moxley's investigastion. When will they ever learn? As the Reg reports today, Kooshian pleaded guilty to multiple counts of health-care fraud and lying to investigators. Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grouse, whose White House-with-a-watermelon-patch email drew calls of racism, says he will resign. A confused public reacts: Los Alamitos has a mayor? . . .  Mickadeit: I took jewelry over to one of those cash-for-gold outfits for "Aunt K." So that's what he's calling his cigar-with-heroin-chaser habit. . . . Lanser: OC new-home sales run 87 percent below average. Ouch.

Los Angeles Times: A not-as-enthusiastic tip-of-the-knit cap back at the Times, for acknowledging Weekly news breaker R. Scott Moxley's 2001 cover story on a nurse's allegations that famed Dr. Steven Kooshian dispensed watered-down AIDS meds. Unlike the Reggie, the Times failed to link to Moxley's piece. Parsons: Columnist the Weekly once dubbed the best journalist in Orange County to readers: buh-bye. He'll now be just another California section writer. The Coen Brothers have created an ad that ridicules "clean coal." President Obama set an August 2010 deadline for most U.S. military forces to pull out of Iraq. In a related story, U.S. Military Forces Airlines schedules a buttload of flights from Iraq to Afghanistan.  

Orange County Register: Classes sizes will balloon, up to 254 teachers will lose their jobs and frogs will rain down from the sky if Capistrano Unified School District goes through with plans to slash $25 million from its budget. But deputy superintendent Ron Lebs seems more interested in giving school trustees dining advice. "The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time," Lebs said. "We will keep doing that all the way through June." Bragger. . . . Fear not, fans of public school destruction: all OC districts are screwed. . . . Hey, future furloughed teachers: the line forms at Angel Stadium's Gate 5 for job applications. . . . The Rent show goes on at Corona del Mar High School after principal Fal Asrani is assured a "high-school edition" would be staged. See, in the toned-down version, all references to "gay" are replaced with "freshmen." . . . Octo-mom has been offered $1 million to do a porn film--and I just threw up in my mouth.

Los Angeles Times: The surf gear industry, which is primarily centered in Orange County, is tanking like the rest of the economy. Cost-conscious surfers can always use electrolyzed water to clean their boards. Let's call it a season now: the Angels pound the ChiSox, 12-3, in their spring training opener. Even better: despite the shitty economy, owner Arte Moreno says he'll keep his wallet open to ensure the Halos remain atop the standings. He's probably not a surfer.

When I moved from a growing inland daily newspaper that was printing 70,000 copies to the shrinking Daily Pilot of Newport Beach/Costa Mesa that was printing 25,000 copies or whatever it was in 1989, the press on the other side of the wall from the newsroom quickly got up to top speed my first day and then just as quickly slowed to a stop. "Pre-run is over," I said out loud, having been my previous paper's bulldog editor who checks test copies and yells "Stop the presses!" over the din upon discovery of glaring errors. However, as I was informed by my new co-workers, that was not a pre-run, that was the entire run. Said the assistant city editor, as if reciting a marketing slogan, "The Daily Pilot: it's a quick read."

To the outside world in those olden days, the Pilot may have seemed to be in decline given the fewer copies of smaller papers with fewer ads and stories it was printing. But it was actually providing its busy readership a service with this faster format. Now, all Orange County dailies are in decline, so in that quick-read spirit comes this digest of what our busy readers would discover if they had the time, subscription or inclination to read them.   

I just read this from Editor and Publisher:

"'[M]ore newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009, and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010,' the Chicago-based credit ratings firm Fitch Ratings said in a report on the outlook for U.S. media and entertainment released Wednesday."

Does this mean that by this time next year The Register will be regarded the same way as opera houses and sports franchises--as a status symbols that "important" cities/counties need in order to be seen as relevant? Hell, we've already lost The Angels to LA. And the economic crunch already swallowed Opera Pacific's 2008-2009 season after only one production due to a drop in donations. 

Will alt weeklies, like yours truly, stand a chance faced with these same odds? Are our escort ads enough to keep us afloat?

There is a slight silver lining according to the article:

"Fitch is generally pessimistic across the board, assigning negative outlets to nearly all sectors from Yellow Pages to radio and TV and theme parks. But the newspaper industry is the most at risk of defaulting, it says."

A little comforting, but still spooky.

UPDATED WITH REGISTER'S TAKE ON THE SETTLEMENT:

The Orange County Register agreed today to shell out $42 million to settle a class-action lawsuit by newspaper carriers that was hailed as "the first of its kind in the United States" by the delivery workers' Santa Ana-based law firm.

Daniel J. Callahan of Callahan & Blaine, which represented carriers along with Timothy Cohelan of San Diego's Cohelan & Khoury, broke down settlement as follows in an email sent to the Weekly that announced the settlement: the Reg will pay $36 million in past damages and attorneys' fees and an estimated $6 million worth of benefits going forward to existing and future carriers.

The Register posted a settlement story on its website that included this statement from Scott Flanders, president and chef executive officer of the Register's parent company, Freedom Communications: "I am pleased that the five-year protracted litigation has been resolved through a settlement that is fair to both sides. With this resolution, we bring certainty and finality to this issue, and we can move forward to address other challenges and to strengthen our business."

"Breaking" news in its "Newspaper Deathwatch" category: Media Bistro reports Orange County Register employees are unsure whether to take the buyout currently being offered or risk having future buyout offers lowered:

Nervous staffers at the Orange County Register had been considered asking for voluntary layoffs this week, after news spread that future layoffs would include less generous severance packages. (Currently, staffers are offered to two weeks' pay per each year worked.)

But when staffers asked EIC Ken Brusic about this directly, we hear he announced that was not necessarily the case.

Just received word from an anonymous but reliable source that the Register is going to announce the elimination of 30 newsroom positions tomorrow. The paper is hoping to avoid direct layoffs by getting volunteers.

Stay tuned for updates on who jumps the ship(wreck).*

*Update #1: Apparently, Freedom Communications hatchet men are waving carrots before sticks, offering sweet retirement deals to senior-level management before going to lowly reporters. The best deal yet: a payout through the end of the year plus two weeks severence pay for every year of service. Rumor has it that Register editor Ken Brusic may say adios amigos anyday now. It'd be hard to blame him.

By the way: if you think this county doesn't need it's own daily muckraking journal, you ought to read John Gittelsohn's hard-hitting coverage of the ongoing real estate meltdown cum global financial crisis. Here's a link to his latest story:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/soni-washington-mutual-2163800-sonis-family

Poor OC Register reporter Hang Nguyen, who had to scribble up this totally straight, humorless blog post on the Reggie's web site about the Chick's Sporting Goods chain undergoing what could be a rather painful name change to Dick's Sporting Goods.....a transition sure to be applauded by hermaphrodites and genderfuckers the world over. Like the few who've already responded say, so many punchlines, so little time.....

The Orange County Business Journal is reporting that local mega-slumlord George Argyros is interested in buying the Orange County Register (we'd link to the OCBJ, but you have to pay to read the article--get with the 21st century, Rick Reiff!). This is a horrible idea, and not just because Argyros knows nothing about journalism and is notorious for buying properties and putting no money in them (best examples: Seattle Mariners during the 1980s, his apartments). It boils down to this: George Argyros supports censoring journalists.

How do I know? Because I suffered George's portly wrath.

In March 2004, a week after the deadly Madrid train bombings, I wrote an article haranguing Argyros--then the non-Spanish-speaking ambassador to Spain--for his role in forcing Spain to enter the War on Terror, a war opposed by nearly 90 percent of Spaniards. Two months later, Argyros was at Chapman University, my alma mater and a school where Argyros graduated from and was the longtime chair of the Board of Trustees. He was at Chapman to escort around former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, a gavilán (chicken hawk) if ever there was one. Athnar (spelling deliberate to emulate the Castilian lithp) gave a speech of some sort, and then was going to give a press conference.

I covered Athnar's speech, then went to the press conference. Before I could enter the room, Chapman's then-head of public relations, a diminutive creature by the name of Ruth Wardwell, told me I was banned from the press conference for my Argyros article. Apparently, Argyros was so infuriated by my piece that he demanded retribution, and his will was done to a formerly proud Chapman alumni.

I've received private apologies from Chapman administrators and teachers who remember me in the years since but never a public one from President Jim Doti (indeed, he once told students who wrote a never-published story on the incident that I "didn't reflect Chapman values") or Argyros for their role in banning me from a press conference and setting a stellar example for their students. Fuck them, of course: I'm giving all my pennies to Orange Coast College when I retire.

But if Argyros pulled such petty stops at a university that he doesn't own to go against an enemy and protect his friends, imagine what he'd do with a newspaper. Consider all the connections he has with the lords of Orange County. The thought of an Argyros-owned Register should send chills down any lover of the free press. Argyros would make the pre-Otis Chandler Chandlers seem as unbiased as Jesus.

It's a sad fact that Orange County serves as home to numerous shills pretending to be journalists, but we've also been blessed with excellent reporters who've served their time here before graduating to the national and international stage. To name a few: Dexter Filkins, who has won acclaim for his fearless Iraq War coverage in the New York Times, and best-selling author J.R. Moehringer.

The next rising star might be The Orange County Register's Peggy Lowe, who has made often cynical and bitchy fellow journalists openly envious of her work on the Sheriff Mike Carona corruption scandal, coverage of the county's Board of Supervisors and, my favorite, the dissection of county Treasurer Chriss Street, who—as a private court trustee for a bankrupt company—used the business' money for his own European vacation and Botox treatments. At the Denver Post before her Register gig, she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Columbine High School shootings.

Lowe's last day at her Register post is tomorrow. Earlier this year, she won a prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. (You might recognize the name Wallace as belonging to Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes fame.) For nine months beginning in September, Lowe will hone her already-fine skills on this topic: the intersection of politics with civil and criminal law.

Here's the bad news for OC residents and the local journalism community: While Reg bosses have promised to give Lowe her job back after she completes the fellowship, there's no guarantee she'll return at all. Will a wise media giant snatch her away?

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Today, according to reports on LAObserved and Fishbowl LA, the Los Angeles Times got an early start to the layoffs announced last week of 150 newsroom employees. Editors have already drawn up lists of names of folks who will be handed pink slips. But with the surprise—not really—exception of publisher David Hiller, who just quit, no actual names are floating around, according to one source at the paper who has so far survived the bloodletting of Times owner Sam Zell (pictured0.*

Meanwhile, at the Orange County Register, rumor—as in totally unsubstantiated rumor being passed to us by folks at the paper—has it that the Reg is going to let another 80 employees go. There's even wild talk that Freedom Communications has a plan in the works to shutter its Irvine offices and move into the Reg building on Grand Street (seeing as how there's a lot of office space opening up there). So far, though, the Irvine building, which Freedom has owned since the 1970s, isn't on the market.

Stay tuned... and if you're a Times or Register person whose gang moniker doesn't rhyme with Quisling, please feel free to add whatever depressing details you have....

*Updated, from our source at the Times: "It appears they've gone after a lot of people in features. Richard Cromelin, one of our long-time rock critics got it."

*In an email, Cromelin confirms he's leaving the paper.