The Orange County Register is considering shrinking the daily newspaper to a tabloid-size paper as part of an operations review designed to cut costs, according to a trade publication report.
The potential move would cut the size of the paper by about half, taking it from a vertical, broadsheet that folds in the middle to a more compact size like those of the Register’s weekly community newspapers.
The option and other moves are under review, Terry Horne, Register publisher and president, told trade publication Editor & Publisher.
Exact sizes and other details still would need to be worked out, he said. Prototypes could be created in the coming weeks or months.
The potential switch is one of several cost-cutting ideas that came out of an internal Register review done in August, according to Editor & Publisher.
The Register, part of Irvine-based Freedom Communications Inc., is struggling with a downturn in daily newspaper advertising and circulation that is getting worse before it gets better.
For the six months through March, the paper’s daily circulation fell 12% from a year earlier to 250,724.
A shift to tabloid paper would bring the Register in line with its weekly community papers covering individual cities in the county. Those papers have fared better in the downturn than the Register.
The potential move also would echo the Register’s 2006 attempt to create a second daily newspaper with The OC Post. That was a tabloid-size paper designed to be easier to read for people on the go.
In February, the Register scaled back the Post by combining it with the Irvine World News, which circulates in Irvine on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
For a while, the paper had an Irvine World News/OC Post masthead but now just goes by Irvine World News.
The Irvine World News is seen as a model for the Register’s community papers.
The Register has made other changes. The company recently reduced the width of its broadsheet pages to cut paper costs.
Other potential cost-cutting measures being considered are smaller papers on Mondays and Tuesdays and closing some distribution centers, according to the report.
The paper recently cut its distribution centers from seven to six, Horne told Editor & Publisher.
For now, the paper change and other moves are just options: “Studying it and doing it may be two different things,” Horne said.
Any changes could be several months off, he said.
