The parent company of the Orange County Register is cutting production of its Phoenix-area paper as it deals with an ongoing industry downturn.
Irvine-based Freedom Communications Inc. plans to cut production of The East Valley Tribune in suburban Phoenix from seven to four days a week.
The East Valley Tribune, with a combined paid and free circulation of 100,000, will be the largest daily paper in the country to cut the number of days its prints. The change is set to take effect in January.
The move is part of an ongoing effort by Freedom to cut back some operations to focus on reaching subscribers that advertisers most care about.
“You give something up on the fringes to get more on the core,” Jonathan Segal, president of Freedom Communications, told industry publication Editor & Publisher.
At the Orange County Register, Freedom’s largest paper with weekday circulation of 236,270 and about 300,000 on Sundays, a number of changes are being looked at.
The Santa Ana-based daily is considering shrinking the paper to a tabloid size. Other potential cost-cutting measures being considered are smaller papers on Mondays and Tuesdays and closing some distribution centers.
The Register also is said to be considering the combination of some operations with the Los Angeles Times.
“We are having a lot of conversations that in the past in a different environment would have been inconceivable,” Scott Flanders, Freedom’s chief executive, told the Business Journal in September.
The East Valley Tribune is Freedom’s third-largest paper after the Register and Colorado’s The Gazette.
Register Publisher Terry Horne joined the paper from the East Valley Tribune in August.
