You may remember N. Christian Anderson III as the former publisher (and, if you're really old, editor) of the Orange County Register.
He left the Register in the middle of those cost-/staff-cutting days of 2007, later popping up at The Oregonian, where he just announced delivery of the print edition will be reduced from seven to three days a week and that newsroom layoffs are already under way.
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But worry not, foes of Oregon's continued Californication, you'll still be able to read the paper every day … online.
Anderson told staff members Thursday morning they should know by this morning whether they will be laid off, which should explain the bags under the eyes of certain worry warts today. And the really bad hair day, as reporter Anna Griffin tweeted, “The newsroom was just told there will be 'significant layoffs,' w/some new hiring for digital. Somebody open the bar tab.”
Super secret message to my fellow virtual ink stained wretches: Avoid the pharmaceutical chasers as Oregonian editor-turned-Oregonian Publishing vice president of content Peter Bhatia informed editors and reporters they will be subject to fresh new drug tests should they want to stick around.
See if Willamette Weekly is still hiring, potheads!
Meanwhile, surviving editors will also be known as “content producers” in the brave new Oregon digital world. This is all said to be part of Oregonian owner Advance Publications Inc. of New Jersey's shift to the web at papers it owns across the country.
Could be worse: editors could be known as “team leaders,” as they were (still are?) at the Register's community rags.
In a press release, Anderson wrote, “While we believe these changes will create growth opportunities for our employees, the reality is that some employees will lose their jobs.”
He knows something about that from his days at the pre-Aaron “Open Wallet” Kushner Register. When he became editor of the Reg in 1980, Anderson was the youngest editor of a metropolitan newspaper in America. The paper would win two Pulitzer prizes under his leadership, and he was named Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation in 1989.
Anderson moved to general management of the Register in 1992, then became president and publisher of Freedom's Colorado Springs Gazette in 1994. He returned to the Register in 1999 as publisher and CEO and was named the nation's Publisher of the Year by Editor & Publisher magazine in 2007.
True story: some Register douche delivered me papers and billing me for them without my having subscribed, which got me so pissed I used to do newspaper drive-bys with those goddamn papers, hurling them at the Grand Avenue HQ some mornings on my to work when the Weekly was in Santa Ana. Eventually, this grew tiresome, so I got through to Anderson's secretary, who patched me through to his voice mail, where I left a very R-rated message. The papers finally stopped coming after that. Now if I could just get the Daily Pilot and Freedom's weekly Current to stop polluting my driveway.
Anyway, Anderson left the Register in dark days of late 2007, took two years to recover from my phone call and then joined The Oregonian in October 2009. He'd grown up and spent many formative years up there in God's locked and loaded country.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.