The OC Post, begun in August 2006, always was an ill-conceived venture. “There’s nothing like it” ran a Register editorial boosting it at the time.
Now, there’s really nothing like it because it isn’t.
It’s “merging” with the Irvine World News:
February’s change ends an 18-month newspaper experiment targeting busy Orange County residents who want local news, but in a more compact, quicker-to-read format. The Post featured short stories, typically four or five inches long, and the pages were punctuated with color and graphics.
It is a format with a mixed track record. It proved successful in commuter-oriented areas like Chicago and Washington, D.C. and throughout Europe but the A.M. Journal Express in Dallas folded after six months.
Register officials launched the Post with great fanfare and hopes Aug. 21, 2006. The goal was for a paid circulation of 140,000 six days a week. A year’s subscription was $19.99. It cost 25 cents at the newsrack.
The Post was started by Register publisher Chris Anderson, who was canned a year later. My blogs on the Post are here. The slogan was, “News cut to fit your life.” Now the Post is a newspaper that’s cut.
I always thought it was a mistaken idea. Orange County isn’t a “commuter-oriented” area beccause we drive cars everywhere.
I feel sorry for the folks affected. But at this late date, I think everyone knows working for Freedom Comm is as risky as working for the Dennis Kucinich for President campaign.
I also wonder if it’s a good idea to combine the Post with the Irvine World News. Irvine, home to UCI, is the most educated city in the county, so everybody’s online. It also has large sections of wealthy immigrants, especially from China and Iran, who are unlikely to read a throw-away.
To launch the Post, Freedom Communications blew $20 million — money that could have gone to beef up the Register and preclude, or at least postpone, layoffs. It especially could have been used to improve the paper’s online look and features, which are inadequate.
The Post fiasco was itself the most glaring recent mistake by Freedom Communications’ out-of-touch, top-heavy management. Ironically, far from saving the company, it may have been the Post that will end up killing Freedom.
Last summer I ran a “dead pool” of predictions for when the Post would be euthanized. A lot of folks sent in predictions, some of them anonymous. And the winner is…”OCClairvoyant,” an anonymous person, who chose Jan. 1, 2008, the only date in 2008.
Congratulations. You win a picture of Chris Anderson run off my home printer.
Posts
The OC Post was free at many newsstands and still nobody was picking it up. Absolutely dull and worthless. The non-tabloid tabloid. It needed drunken Australians and Fleet Streeters to give it some life. What happened to newspapers with character? Sure The OC Weekly’s a rag, but at least it’s full of goofy sex ads and liberal mumbo-jumbo you can laugh at. I haven’t bought the Register in years. Just about as anti-Caucasian as the L.A. Times. Who needs to be insulted by affirmative action hires? Most metro newspapers are interchangeable, you can’t tell one from the other.
Hey Rafe: Laugh at our liberal mumbo-jumbo if you must, but at least we nail bad guys like Carona!
Gustavo lurking on Seiler’s site! Now I’ve seen everything. What next Gustavo, “Ask a Libertarian”?