FOUNDED: 1905—Founded as the Santa Ana Daily Evening Register, then renamed Santa Ana Register by owner R.C. Hoiles in 1939. Rebranded as The Orange County Register in 1985.
LEGACY LEADERSHIP: Two San Diego printers, Frank Ormer and Fred Unholz launched the Santa Ana Daily Evening Register in 1905. John P. Baumgartner took a majority stake in the newspaper a year later and expanded its coverage across Orange County. Raymond Cyrus Hoiles reshaped the paper’s editorial identity after purchasing it in 1935 and making it the flagship of his Freedom Newspapers chain.
NEWSROOM HQ: Santa Ana (1905–2017). Moved to Anaheim in 2017 after being purchased by the parent company of the Los Angeles Daily News. Reporters now work remotely, while top editors work from an office in Irvine.
OC SIGNIFICANCE: As OC’s leading newspaper, the Register helped shape the region’s civic and political identity. Under the Hoiles family, it gained national attention for its libertarian-leaning opinions and support of limited government, which helped cement OC’s national conservative reputation. The Register dominated local news coverage through its daily and weekly newspapers.
DEFINING MOMENT: At its peak, Freedom had more than 100 newspapers across the U.S. with the Register as its flagship. Like many newspapers, financial pressures tied to declining circulation led to two Chapter 11 bankruptcies. The first, in 2010, ended decades of Hoiles family control, while the second culminated in the $49.8M sale in 2016 to current owner, Digital First Media.
QUOTABLE: “Freedom is the right of a man to choose how he controls himself, as long as he respects the equal rights of every other individual to plan and control his own life. In short, it means self-control and self-governance, no more, no less.” — R.C. Hoiles
FUN FACT: The Register earned three Pulitzer Prizes for spot news photography (1985), beat reporting (1989) and investigative reporting on fertility fraud at UCI (1997).
