Freedom Communications Holdings Inc. in Santa Ana made local headlines when the parent company of the Orange County Register asked its employees to take two weeks of unpaid leave within the next two months.
It also offered buyouts to its newsroom staff of 345, which may turn into layoffs if its targeted cuts aren’t met, according to the Register’s report on the move.
Layoffs already hit the publication’s sales department.
Freedom also announced it will shift its Long Beach Register from a stand-alone newspaper published six days a week to a free weekly that it plans to deliver to about 61,000 area households on Sundays. It plans to make the change June 15.
The Los Angeles Register, which Freedom launched in April, will soon begin to feature a daily Long Beach section and carry it as a stand-alone community section on Sundays in the Long Beach area.
Meanwhile, the Register will trim its news pages by a quarter, according to news reports, including by reducing its business section from seven to five days and nixing a stand-alone fashion section.
―Mediha DiMartino
