The Orange County Register plans to cut 14 newsroom positions through attrition, combine two of its weeklies, close the Irvine Spectrum News and take other cost-cutting measures.
Tonnie Katz, editor and senior vice president of the Register, told employees of the changes during a meeting last week.
“People who work at these products will no longer have jobs,” she said. “We hope over the next three months to accommodate them through attrition. There is no stomach for layoffs here.”
One employee said if the Register can’t find new positions for the affected workers within 90 days, the paper could look to layoffs.
Other cutbacks include reducing pages in the newspaper’s TV guide, saving five pages by eliminating its Discover Orange County section, and saving four pages by merging the Taste food section into Accent.
Along with closing the free Irvine Spectrum News, a product of the recently acquired Irvine World News, the Register also plans to combine its Brea and La Habra weekly newspapers and close two of its Community Close Ups,a Thursday weekly covering North and Central counties by March 22.
The Register’s cutbacks come at a time when the newspaper industry is struggling to grow advertising in a cooling economy. The page reductions at the Register come after two recent increases in newsprint prices and the prospect of another this month.
The Register, the flagship paper of Irvine-based Freedom Communications Inc., is Orange County’s largest newspaper with average daily circulation of 358,654 and 417,247 for the Sunday edition, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. n
