You young'uns don't remember this, but the Orange County Register began life as the Santa Ana Register, and was named that until about the 1960s. Its focus was on SanTana, and because it was the biggest city in the county, it eventually became the de facto paper in the region, and slowly bought out its daily competition, whose names are their sole legacy in the current Reg's throwaway rags (Anaheim Bulletin, Fullerton News-Tribune, Placentia Courier, etc.).

But in Reg owner Aaron Kushner's eternal push to turn back the clock to the 1950s, the paper is returning the Santa Ana Register name as a standalone weekly.

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Whenever people get on our case about the sexytimes ads we run in our infernal rag, I always point out that the Orange County Register run those sames ads, except smaller, coded, and in the back pages of its Sports section. Hell, I'm old enough to remember when the Reg would run ads for adult theaters, complete with movie titles--there was the one off of Beach Boulevard, and another one whose ad always had a sketch drawing of a man in a Panama hat looking at a lass. Creepy!

Alas, I will no longer be able to use that specious argument, as the Register is no longer accepting those types of ads in owner Aaron Kushner's continuing push to make his paper "classier."

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"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it: I'll hire people who look like me!"

Yes, yes: The Orange County Register has embarked on a hiring spree not seen since the days Otis Chandler was sweating money back in the 1980s. Yes, yes: hiring up, not down, is a wonderful strategy, not just because it ensures news reporting doesn't disappear but also employs people and keeps writers from joining the dark side that is PR.

But a funny thing has emerged as Reg reporter Aaron Kushner basks in the limelight of positive press for turning himself into the Daddy Warbucks of print. Notice all the Reg reporters? They're so...white. It's about as white as the Balboa Bay Club membership--and even this den of old money keeps a couple of token "Hispanics" to spice up the membership rolls.

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"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and, doggone it, people are going to believe me!"

I finally got a copy of the "new" Orange County Register yesterday, magically finding an extant copy in downtown San Clemente, and an amazing thing happened: it took me four minutes to read the paper, instead of the usual three. WOW, tens of millions of dollars spent to marginally upgrade the product! The front page section was still a collection of cobbled-together wire stories; the Local section, just a quick Mickadeit read and unreadable op-ed pieces. The only parts worth reading were the reviews of food critic Brad A. Johnson--but favoring El Farolito over 301 Cafe for great Placentia Cal-Mex? WEAK SALSA...

And then their was their horrid college section. Every Monday through Wednesday, the Reg devotes a special pullout section each day to Cal State Fullerton, Chapman University, and UC Irvine, who just happen to have big ol' ads in said sections to the tune of nearly a million dollars.

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Media Matters for America, the progressive watchdog counterpart to Accuracy in Media, takes issue with an Orange County Register editorial that uses the financial woes of nearly dead electric car company Fisker Automotive to argue against government investment in green technology: "Despite the increasing benefits seen in the green energy industry, media outlets--like the OC Register­--have chosen to focus on the bad reports while neglecting companies such as Tesla, which received $465 million in Department of Energy funding, not only making a profit in the first quarter of 2013 but agreeing to repay its loans five years early."

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The Orange County Register's new paywall is not even a day old, and readers are already railing against OC's paper of record in the precious way only they can.

Of course, we're not privy to the phone calls, letters and emails being sent to Reg owner Aaron Kushner, or even the hubub beyond the paywall, but the Register's Facebook page as of this moment is still open to anyone with an opinion about the move--and so far, no one is happening.

Following are screen grabs of the funniest ones so far, and all we can say at this moment is that it's a matter of time before someone blames the Mexicans.
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The Great Wall of Grand Street...

Let us be clear before we go any further: we in no way condone any illegal hacking, any illegal theft, or any illegal scaling of the coming digital wall that the Orange County Register is placing on its website starting this week, the wall its owners don't want anyone to criticize. But that's the thing about walls: they're meant to be scaled (just ask la migra). And the Wizards of Grand Street are already setting themselves up for an epic fail by openly boasting about how their system of subscription is impenetrable.

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Updated, with new info on the bottom...

ORIGINAL POST, MARCH 28, 12:30 P.M.: When Orange County Register owner Aaron Kushner first took the reins of OC's paper of record last year, one of the first things he did was announce that he was going to erect a paywall for the paper's website. Kushner didn't say when or how it would work, but details are starting to emerge from Grand Street, both official and not.

The unofficial part: the Register wants to institute some type of daily pass that would allow readers to be able to access the website for a full day, along with its archives. And Kushner wants a full paywall--no freebies for laggers, save for some blogs and incomplete stories. Hell, even partial subscribers to the paper will only be able to access the paper's website on the days they subscribe--how fucked up is that?
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Last week, I made my case as to why I think new-ish Orange County Register owner Aaron Kushner is the Stuart Smalley of print media. I received pushback on that idea by KCRW-FM 89.9 host Steve Chiotakis, who's much more mature and reasoned than I. But I shot back that I wasn't the only one with such a dim view of Kushner, who made waves after he told his newsroom that he didn't believe in "afflicting the comfortable," remarks that more than a few Reg scribes have lamely tried to defend as a reminder to tell stories truthfully. Um, DUH.

And I'll reiterate what I said before and I'll always say--good for Kushner for hiring up, instead of slashing like nearly every other news organization in America. But when you start mouthing platitudes in journalism, something's fishy on Grand Avenue...

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"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and, doggone it, people are going to subscribe to me!"

Whenever I lecture about journalism, whether to senior-citizens groups or college students, I always tell them that the mission of the OC Weekly is an old journalism adage attributed to Finley Peter Dunne, author of ¡Ask a Mexican! godfather Mr. Dooley: We comfort the afflicted, and we afflict the comfortable. In other words, we celebrate the good and righteous of Orange County, those folks who don't nearly get enough love (the afflicted) and attack the assholes and pendejos of Orange County that give us a reputation as a hellhole (the comfortable). Everyone always laughs nervously at my comment, since they've been brought up in a media atmosphere where watchdog journalism and muckraking has been relegated to rags with ads for "alternative medicine" and "massage therapists."

And then there's newish Orange County Register owner Aaron Kushner, a member of the comfortable class that doesn't like it when people say bad things about the comfortable.

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