By Scott Hays
For the record, I grew up in Orange County back when the Orange County Register was a small, hometown newspaper known as the Santa Ana Register, bearing the Hoiles family’s unmistakable imprint of their Libertarian philosophy. Anaheim still had its own daily paper, the Costa Mesa Daily Pilot actually published daily, and we even had a handful of local business and community magazines, a boldly liberal alt-weekly and, yes, our own cable news stations Orange County NewsChannel (OCN) and the PBS-affiliate KOCE.
Then came the great newspaper war during the 1980s through the mid-2000s: the Register versus the Los Angeles Times—a full-contact battle for readers, ad dollars, and journalistic dominance. It was intense, competitive, and a golden era for local journalism. Reporters were everywhere, chasing stories in every corner of the county. Every city, every issue, every angle—covered.
At its peak, the Orange County Register employed roughly 350 newsroom employees and printed roughly 350,000 newspapers daily, and filled most of its six-story, 175,000-square-foot headquarters at 625 North Grand in Santa Ana.
By contrast, the Los Angeles Times’ Orange County edition employed maybe 1,000 people and printed roughly 250,000 newspapers daily, operating out of its nearly 340,000-square-foot space on Sunflower Avenue in Costa Mesa.
Two newsrooms, two strategies, both once central to the region’s media identity.
Both buildings have long been sold, with military defense company Anduril now occupying the former LA Times OC edition campus.
Shrinking Newsrooms
It’s no secret: media across the country have been in a crisis for well over a decade. Shrinking newsrooms, corporate consolidations, and a steady decline in advertising revenue have gutted the infrastructure of local reporting and storytelling.
Somewhere along this shifting media landscape between then and now, the ground gave way. The old pillars—legacy print publications—began to crumble under the weight of a new digital reality: a world driven by likes and clicks, Facebook scrolls, and TikTok trends. It wasn’t just the Internet reshaping the industry, it was Hedge funds, too, acquiring newspapers to squeeze out better margins, but not necessarily to produce better journalism.
Today, U.S. daily newspaper circulations (print + digital) have fallen roughly 65 percent from 1990 to 2022, and U.S. daily newspaper advertising revenues have declined roughly 80 percent – these figures according to a Pew Research Center report.
Across the U.S. daily newspaper industry, employment has declined roughly 73 percent from 2005 to 2022 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).
In Orange County, OCN ceased operation in early 2000s after continued financial struggles, the OC Weekly folded with the decline of alt-weekly newspapers, and just this past decade, the Register found itself in bankruptcy before being scooped up by Digital First Media News—a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital, one of the biggest players in that very hedge-fund game.
The Los Angeles Times made headlines of its own in January when it cut roughly 20 percent of the newsroom staff in one of its most severe layoffs in history. Even billionaires, it seems, can’t save legacy print as Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong announced plans to take his newspaper public within the next year.
Nowadays, only 25 percent of Americans still engage with a daily print newspaper, down from 60 percent or more before the Internet.
Although the Los Angeles Times still has a significant presence throughout Southern California, it no longer has a dedicated daily Orange County edition. Its local footprint is now a fraction of what it was during the peak of its circulation war with the Register in the 1990s and early 2000s.
As for the Register, an article in the Orange County Business Journal, citing the paper’s publisher, estimated the Register’s daily print circulation has dropped to “around 87,000,” and by some estimates its digital readership has dropped by 72% over the previous three years.
And ever since KOCE’s merger with its LA-based sister station KCET in 2018, public media TV stations have seemingly “shifted” their local coverage away from Orange County-focused programming.
A New Digital Reality
The question begs itself: where are Orange County residents getting their local news stories?
Most Americans these days are now getting their information via digital platforms, especially video/social media feeds, and in particular YouTube, according to a 2025 Reuters Institute Report.
These aren’t just industry shifts. They’re also community shifts. Certainly, the impact has been felt here in Orange County—an affluent community of 3.2 million residents and third-largest county economy in the state—which has found itself in “news desert” territory, with only a handful of reporters, editors, producers, and storytellers who still bust their hides trying to cover news and local issues and stories of significance.
In a region as diverse and complex as Orange County, the decline of these sort of platforms undermines the health of public media with diminished local coverage. Without these sorts of resources, we lose more than just information—we lose a space for thoughtful and respectful information-gathering that helps people stay informed and engaged.
With disruption, though, comes opportunity.
As Orange County evolves, so too will the media models and platforms rising to meet the region’s needs: digital weeklies like Stu News, hyper-local news-reporting watchdogs like the Voice of OC, weekly business publications like the Orange County Business Journal, and innovative nonprofit multimedia programming like OC World –which will continue at their own pace along with niche print and radio.
These days, I see residents in every community of Orange County looking for local stories and news about schools, crime, business, family, government—a golden opportunity for an astute entrepreneur to figure out the magic formula for a more sustainable business model. Yet, while the for-profit model has fueled many of Orange County’s most successful ventures in real estate and restaurants and business, sustaining meaningful local multimedia platforms may require vision and innovations.
For the moment, the real future of local media in Orange County will depend not only on skilled writers, reporters and storytellers but also on a community willing to invest in them through advertising, sponsorships, underwriting and grant opportunities. Without support from the community, local media will wither or simply disappear altogether.
Scott Hays is co-founder and executive producer of OC World, an award-winning nonprofit multimedia company that broadcasts to households from Santa Barbara to San Diego on the KCS-PBS station. He was more than three decades of journalism experience, including serving as a reporter for publications in Costa Mesa, Fullerton, and Northern California. He’s also written non-fiction books, produced his own radio show, and co-produced Inside OC Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Reiff at PBS SoCal. He holds dual master’s degrees—one in Communications and another in English Literature.
Originally published in the Orange County Business Journal – https://www.ocbj.com/leader-board/the-future-of-orange-countys-local-news/
By Scott Hays
For the record, I grew up in Orange County back when the Orange County Register was a small, hometown newspaper known as the Santa Ana Register, bearing the Hoiles family’s unmistakable imprint of their Libertarian philosophy. Anaheim still had its own daily paper, the Costa Mesa Daily Pilot actually published daily, and we even had a handful of local business and community magazines, a boldly liberal alt-weekly and, yes, our own cable news stations Orange County NewsChannel (OCN) and the PBS-affiliate KOCE.
Then came the great newspaper war during the 1980s through the mid-2000s: the Register versus the Los Angeles Times—a full-contact battle for readers, ad dollars, and journalistic dominance. It was intense, competitive, and a golden era for local journalism. Reporters were everywhere, chasing stories in every corner of the county. Every city, every issue, every angle—covered.
At its peak, the Orange County Register employed roughly 350 newsroom employees and printed roughly 350,000 newspapers daily, and filled most of its six-story, 175,000-square-foot headquarters at 625 North Grand in Santa Ana.
By contrast, the Los Angeles Times’ Orange County edition employed maybe 1,000 people and printed roughly 250,000 newspapers daily, operating out of its nearly 340,000-square-foot space on Sunflower Avenue in Costa Mesa.
Two newsrooms, two strategies, both once central to the region’s media identity.
Both buildings have long been sold, with military defense company Anduril now occupying the former LA Times OC edition campus.
Shrinking Newsrooms
It’s no secret: media across the country have been in a crisis for well over a decade. Shrinking newsrooms, corporate consolidations, and a steady decline in advertising revenue have gutted the infrastructure of local reporting and storytelling.
Somewhere along this shifting media landscape between then and now, the ground gave way. The old pillars—legacy print publications—began to crumble under the weight of a new digital reality: a world driven by likes and clicks, Facebook scrolls, and TikTok trends. It wasn’t just the Internet reshaping the industry, it was Hedge funds, too, acquiring newspapers to squeeze out better margins, but not necessarily to produce better journalism.
Today, U.S. daily newspaper circulations (print + digital) have fallen roughly 65 percent from 1990 to 2022, and U.S. daily newspaper advertising revenues have declined roughly 80 percent – these figures according to a Pew Research Center report.
Across the U.S. daily newspaper industry, employment has declined roughly 73 percent from 2005 to 2022 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).
In Orange County, OCN ceased operation in early 2000s after continued financial struggles, the OC Weekly folded with the decline of alt-weekly newspapers, and just this past decade, the Register found itself in bankruptcy before being scooped up by Digital First Media News—a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital, one of the biggest players in that very hedge-fund game.
The Los Angeles Times made headlines of its own in January when it cut roughly 20 percent of the newsroom staff in one of its most severe layoffs in history. Even billionaires, it seems, can’t save legacy print as Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong announced plans to take his newspaper public within the next year.
Nowadays, only 25 percent of Americans still engage with a daily print newspaper, down from 60 percent or more before the Internet.
Although the Los Angeles Times still has a significant presence throughout Southern California, it no longer has a dedicated daily Orange County edition. Its local footprint is now a fraction of what it was during the peak of its circulation war with the Register in the 1990s and early 2000s.
As for the Register, an article in the Orange County Business Journal, citing the paper’s publisher, estimated the Register’s daily print circulation has dropped to “around 87,000,” and by some estimates its digital readership has dropped by 72% over the previous three years.
And ever since KOCE’s merger with its LA-based sister station KCET in 2018, public media TV stations have seemingly “shifted” their local coverage away from Orange County-focused programming.
A New Digital Reality
The question begs itself: where are Orange County residents getting their local news stories?
Most Americans these days are now getting their information via digital platforms, especially video/social media feeds, and in particular YouTube, according to a 2025 Reuters Institute Report.
These aren’t just industry shifts. They’re also community shifts. Certainly, the impact has been felt here in Orange County—an affluent community of 3.2 million residents and third-largest county economy in the state—which has found itself in “news desert” territory, with only a handful of reporters, editors, producers, and storytellers who still bust their hides trying to cover news and local issues and stories of significance.
In a region as diverse and complex as Orange County, the decline of these sort of platforms undermines the health of public media with diminished local coverage. Without these sorts of resources, we lose more than just information—we lose a space for thoughtful and respectful information-gathering that helps people stay informed and engaged.
With disruption, though, comes opportunity.
As Orange County evolves, so too will the media models and platforms rising to meet the region’s needs: digital weeklies like Stu News, hyper-local news-reporting watchdogs like the Voice of OC, weekly business publications like the Orange County Business Journal, and innovative nonprofit multimedia programming like OC World –which will continue at their own pace along with niche print and radio.
These days, I see residents in every community of Orange County looking for local stories and news about schools, crime, business, family, government—a golden opportunity for an astute entrepreneur to figure out the magic formula for a more sustainable business model. Yet, while the for-profit model has fueled many of Orange County’s most successful ventures in real estate and restaurants and business, sustaining meaningful local multimedia platforms may require vision and innovations.
For the moment, the real future of local media in Orange County will depend not only on skilled writers, reporters and storytellers but also on a community willing to invest in them through advertising, sponsorships, underwriting and grant opportunities. Without support from the community, local media will wither or simply disappear altogether.
Scott Hays is co-founder and executive producer of OC World, an award-winning nonprofit multimedia company that broadcasts to households from Santa Barbara to San Diego on the KCS-PBS station. He was more than three decades of journalism experience, including serving as a reporter for publications in Costa Mesa, Fullerton, and Northern California. He’s also written non-fiction books, produced his own radio show, and co-produced Inside OC Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Reiff at PBS SoCal. He holds dual master’s degrees—one in Communications and another in English Literature.
Originally published in the Orange County Business Journal – https://www.ocbj.com/leader-board/the-future-of-orange-countys-local-news/
