Comments on: To survive we must be “cheaper, better, faster,” Terry Horne, president OC Register

By: Ron & Anna Winship

Ron & Anna Winship — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:58:39 +0000

*One last thought:

“If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed; If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.” — Mark Twain.

By: Ron & Anna Winship

Ron & Anna Winship — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:17:00 +0000

Newspapers, if properly guided and directed can be a huge public benefit. They can attend public forums, follow up on police reports, chase errant corrupt politicians and follow the basic carnage of daily living: Including; Fires, Earthquakes, Taxes and New Government rules and regulations. All of which are not usually covered by your basic bloggers in either detail or perhaps even correctly – non-partisanly!

By: allan pilger

allan pilger — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:52:16 +0000

Register President Terry Horne is obliged to put a little bit of a smile face on his industry’s dliemma, but it won’t work.

Here are the facts and numbers. In their heyday, metro newspapers boasted of independently audited circulation figures which distinquished them from empty claims by weeklies, shoppers and small dailies. The audit bureau of circulation still independently verifies paid newspaper circulation (subscriptions and single copy sales), showing steady declines in paid circulation for the Register, Times and mostly all daily newspapers.

Now Horne is making the same type of general claims (55 percent combined readersship for print and website) his industry used to mock its competitors for making.

The ABC is supposed to count only discounted paid circulation that is 50 percent or greater than the regular rate. After cancelling my Register subscription of about $23 per month 7-day delivery, I was enticed back with an offer of $26 for the entire year! That is less than 10 percent of the full price. So if the publisher is counting my subscription among his claimed increase in subs, then his is ignoring ABC. Perhaps ABC has softened its rules to try to preserve the newpaper industry and its own existance.

Either way 50 cents per week is a virtual giveaway, the same desperation of the evening dailies before they disappeared from big cities and the suburbs.

An independent survey conducted by the city of Mission Viejo, only 15 percent of respondents said they get their local news from the Register/Saddleback Valley News. And than was down from 19 percent from a survey two years earlier.

The Saddleback Valley News Wednesday edition is down to 12 pages and should not be considered as a separate newspaper, but more as an insert into the daily.

Larry is on target on newspaper reporters putting government’s spin on stories.

Allan Pilger

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:14:37 +0000

Well, the OC Register is so bad that it probably would be best if it died.
I arrived at this conclusion a couple years back, when, after a fire in the Chemistry building at UCI, a completely clueless reporter from the OC Register basically accused UCI and the Fire Marshall of negligence because there were no sprinklers in the building.
In a letter to the editor I pointed out that anybody with common sense would know that water and certain chemicals don’t mix all that well… Of course, the letter wasn’t printed.
My conclusion from this episode: a newspaper that employs reporters who seem to have slept through basic high school classes is, quite frankly, not worth supporting.