The Orange County Register company-owned Long Beach Register ceased publication Sunday, joining their Los Angeles Register in becoming a collector's item.
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Long Beach Register Deletes Tweet Asking Readers Whether Vaccinating Kids is a “Good or Bad Idea”
For those keeping score at home, that was a 16-month rack life for the Long Beach Register, which launched in August 2013. The Los Angeles Register ceased publishing in September after a five-month run.
It was as if then-publisher Aaron Kushner knew something everyone else in the PTSD-laden print newspaper industry did not when he launched the papers. His announced strategy was to increase market share by offering readers alternatives to the Los Angeles Times and Long Beach Press-Telegram while at the same time streamlining costs by producing both papers with his Orange County staff in Santa Ana.
But despite heavy promotion, neither paper took off with readers or, more importantly, advertisers. At the same time the Los Angeles Register closed, the Long Beach Register went from being published six days a week to Sundays only, tucked inside the Orange County Register.
Freedom Communications spokesman Eric Morgan reportedly told the Los Angeles Times today that “major news developments” in Long Beach will still be covered via ocregister.com and in the print version of the Orange County Register, which is available at racks and newsstands in the city.
As for overall strategy, current publisher Rich Mirman informed the Times that will involve focusing “on serving subscribers and advertisers of the Orange County Register and the [Riverside] Press-Enterprise.”
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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.