This edition of the Orange County Business Journal marks its last with Mark Mueller serving as Editor-in-Chief.
Beginning in mid-May, Mueller will be taking on a new, less time-intensive role at the Business Journal. As Community Editor, he will be assisting the OCBJ in ensuring the newspaper remains well connected with the area’s business and community leaders, and that the print edition of the paper remains a must-read publication.
He will continue to write the popular OCBJ Insider column in his new role.
An Irvine resident, Mueller joined the Business Journal in 2005, initially as the paper’s real estate reporter. He later served as News Editor and Senior Editor, before taking on the Editor-in-Chief role in 2018.
“The Business Journal has always been a standout in the industry, and an outlier in print media. But over the past six years, there’s little doubt that the paper has become the premier regional weekly business paper in the country,” Mueller said.
“That’s certainly reflected in its high standing in the community and its ongoing editorial excellence, not to mention financial performance.”
“Print media largely remains in a death spiral,” Business Journal Publisher Richard Reisman said. “The fact that the Business Journal remains successful and continues to expand in the face of these trends is a testament to the hard work that Mark and his team puts into the paper each week.”
Mueller’s tenure included efforts reinvigorating and elevating some of the paper’s most-read special reports, including the OC’s Wealthiest and OC50 editions, as well as the publication of the OC500, the annual directory of the area’s biggest newsmakers. That book will see its ninth edition published later this year.
“My biggest source of pride was our coverage during the first year or so of the pandemic, when our staff went above and beyond to provide vital information—including numerous stories and features not directly business-related—that our readers needed, and weren’t getting elsewhere,” Mueller said. “I believe we really made a difference to the community at that point.
“I’m obviously biased, but I think that pound-for-pound, we’re one of the best papers in the country, of any type. That said, there’s always room for improvement, and I look forward to seeing [Executive Editor] Peter J. Brennan and the rest of the paper’s outstanding team take the paper to new heights.”
With more free time on his plate, Mueller’s near-term plans include travel, finally learning to surf (suggestions and tips welcome), cooking, catching up with the prolific output from his favorite band, Guided by Voices, and most importantly, spending more time with his family: wife Angelina and daughter Isabella.
