Our newspaper isn't dead yet

There's no question that the newspaper business has been taking it on the chin for the last couple of years, and the recession sometimes feels like the cherry on top (talk about mixed metaphors -- the brass in a knuckle sandwich?). But the Register, perhaps against some pretty stiff headwinds, is at least still profitable, if much less so than in palmier days. This piece from our publisher Terry Horne, who came to us from Freedom's paper in Mesa, AZ about a year ago and whom I really like, explains some of what we're doing to try to stay afloat. It still feels strange to an old dog to be thinking "Web-first," but we're getting used to it.

Register trying to survive

Here's an interview with Orange County Register publisher Terry Horne (brought in last September) about how the newspaper will try to survive during this time when all newspapers are struggling. When he came he described the "perfect storm" of increasing importance of the Internet, which no newspaper really understands yet, losing employment classified ads to Monster.com and lots of merchandise classified to Craigslist. We used to get multiple full-page ads a week from several department stores, but they've consolidated and are advertising less. Car dealers still advertise but not as heavily. None of those are coming back.

We'll be zoning to attract local advertisers who couldn't afford the full run, and will roll out several free community tabloids. Plus we're thinking Web-first, lots of blogs, lots of stuff exclusively on the Web. We'll see how it works. We had a small layoff in January and there's a lot of gallows humor. It seems as if Romanesko is announcing layoffs at some newspaper or another almost every day.