Register Ends L.A. Newspaper, Cuts Staff

Register ends L.A. newspaper, cuts staff

BY LILY LEUNG / STAFF WRITER
Published: Sept. 23, 2014 Updated: 6:39 p.m.

Freedom Communications, the owner of the Orange County Register, has ended the print run of the Los Angeles Register and will redirect its focus to covering Orange County, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the company said Tuesday.

The Los Angeles daily, which launched in April, will continue to have an online presence at losangelesregister.com.

The company’s latest restructuring also resulted in the elimination of 29 newsroom positions.

With those departures, the Orange County Register’s editorial staffing is at 220, still higher than 2011 levels before Register publisher Aaron Kushner, co-owner Eric Spitz and their 2100 Trust bought Freedom in summer 2012.

“One of our biggest challenges – and one that our industry continues to wrestle with – is to evaluate our opportunity costs,” Kushner and Spitz wrote in a memo Monday night to the staff. “In other words, we must make difficult decisions on where we should invest our time and resources to grow.”