​UPDATE, JUNE 16, 9:22 A.M.: Now that merger talks with MediaNews have broken down, Irvine-based owner of the Orange County Register Freedom Communications has revived negotiations with that other Southern California newspaper  publisher.

No, not the Los Angeles investment company that bought the San Diego Union-Tribune but the Tribune Co., owner of regional granddaddy the Los Angeles Times.
More >>

​A newspaper journalist-turned-Silicon Valley media mogul sets up the dominoes which, once tipped over, could lead "a single entity" to "publish all the dailies from the Tehachapi Mountains at the north end of metro L.A. to the Mexican border."

At the middle of it all is the pending sale of the Orange County Register.
More >>

​

Like vultures hovering over roadkill, media companies and private-equity firms are expected to pick at what remains of Irvine's Freedom Communications--parent company of The Orange County Register of Santa Ana--at auction Thursday.

Among those likely placing bids will be Chicago-based Tribune, which owns the Los Angeles Times, and Denver-based MediaNews, which owns just about every daily newspaper in Southern California that is not the Times, Register or San Diego Union-Tribune, which is owned by Platinum Equity, another probable bidder HQ'd in LA.More >>

​

LA Observed's Kevin Roderick hints at something in his Media Notes that we here at the Weekly have been unable to confirm: there have been more staff reductions in a certain Santa Ana newsroom.

"Nudged early retirements, and possibly layoffs, have returned at the Orange County Register, a newsroom source says after meetings today," Roderick posted Thursday.
More >>

​Yesterday, Dean Singleton, the controversial chairman and CEO of MediaNews Group, which owns dozens of newspapers including the Denver Post and LA Daily News, announced he was stepping down from his longtime post. Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting, two new members of the board of directors that will run Singleton's company also work for Alden Global Capital, which is part owner of Freedom Communications. "An insider told WSJ that the company . . . is thinking merger," the paper reports today.

As the WSJ noted, "MediaNews owns nine newspapers in Southern California, some of which already have a working relationship with [The Orange County Register. According to WSJ's inside source, Alden Global Capital "wants to roll at least some of its various newspaper holdings into a single company."

More >>

​Update, November 18, 5:20 p.m.: A media industry watcher suggests Freedom Communications may have a strategy behind what would seem to be a counter-intuitive move to sell the modern-day equivalent of buggy whips, daily newspapers.

"Might the strategy be to sell some of the properties, keep others and reposition the company by investing the proceeds in digital ventures?" Rick Edmonds writes on Poynter Online's The Biz Blog.
More >>

​This post told you about the abrupt shutdown of OCLNN (Orange County Local News Network), an online local news generator for the Los Angeles Times that lasted but four months.

And this post told you some of the dirty details about the way full-time staffers were informed of their sudden unemployment.

But OCLNN also relied on several freelance contributors. After the jump is the Dear John letter they received--electronically, of course.
More >>

​So, I'm a couple paragraphs into this Dan Walters' column on a coalition of education groups filing suit in Alameda County to declare California's public school system unconstitutional when my laptop screen goes dark.

I thought I accidentally pulled the plug out of the outlet. Again.

Nope, for a split second later, a video screen appears over the shaded Walters column and a commercial for something I cannot possibly afford starts rolling.

A note at the top of the black box from Walters' Sacramento Bee overlords informs, "Your free content will return in 14 . . . 13 . . . 12 seconds . . ."

WTF?
More >>

​Spencer reported yesterday that the Los Angeles Times spin-off news site OCLNN, the Orange County Local News Network, has been shut down, only four months after its launch. The site had combined sourcing from both the Times and the San Diego-based US Local News Network.

We just received a few more sordid details from an anonymous source on how it all went down--the broken promises, the sad, sad journalists.
More >>

​It's not particularly unusual to find stories in the Orange County Register that look remarkably similar to press releases issued by the DA's office, Sheriff's Department, or your local police department or mayor's office.

But usually, the name of the writer on the byline would be a bonafide Register reporter, and not say, the city staffer who wrote the release in question. Ah, the good old days...More >>