OC Register to cut 100 jobs

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ksablan | cc-licensed: https://flic.kr/p/9UuNS2

The headquarters of the Orange County Register in Santa Ana. (Photo by ksablan, used under Creative Commons)

The publisher of the Orange County Register plans to cut 100 jobs in Orange County and at the Riverside Press Enterprise, according to the OC Weekly.

Publisher Rich Mirman told employees in a letter that the layoffs won't be in the newsrooms of the two newspapers, but rather across several business units of the Register and The Press-Enterprise.

In the letter obtained by the OC Weekly, Mirman praised former publisher Aaron Kushner for making "bold moves" to improve the business, but "despite these improvements, our business has not achieved the growth necessary to support our cost structure."

"Unfortunately, the business is not profitable," Mirman wrote. "Going forward, success requires us to boldly rethink our priorities and our focus."

Mirman said his company would take "important measures starting today to stabilize our business in 2015 and ultimately position ourselves for success." Part of the overall strategy is to "'right size' the business back to appropriate levels," he added.

The OC Weekly reported that among the 100 people losing their jobs are Riverside Press-Enterprise publisher and Freedom Chief Revenue Officer Mike Burns.

Mirman, a former Harrah's Entertainment executive, replaced Kushner as publisher in October after a number of financial setbacks for the Register and its parent company Freedom Communications.

Mirman told the Los Angeles Times at the time that his first order of business was to straighten out company finances and boost the number of subscribers.

"My goal is to get the business on a trajectory of growth," he told the newspaper.

In June, Freedom combined the Long Beach Register with its Los Angeles sister publication, imposed company-wide furloughs and offered buyouts to dozens of O.C. Register staffers. In September, it cut 29 newsroom jobs and closed the five-month-old Los Angeles Register.