When Aaron Kushner and Eric Spitz first purchased Freedom Communications more than a year ago, the media industry watched in disbelief as they went on a hiring rampage, adding staff to the Orange County Register newsroom when others around the country were cutting. But the duo didn’t stop with just staff, they put their feet down and insisted that investing in the print product was the way to go. And then they did just that.
Existing sections in the print edition were bulked up; roughly 24 new sections were added; old papers were resurrected to be shiny and new, such as the Santa Ana Register. They even launched the Long Beach Register in Long Beach, Calif. Several months later, they scooped up the paper’s major competition in the area when they purchased the Press-Telegram, previously owned by MediaNews Group.
Then last month the ball appeared to drop when they laid off 32 people. In a memo, Kushner noted that the publishing group still employs 370 editorial staff even after the cuts, which is still more than the 198 that were employed by the group when he bought it.
Newspaper analyst Ken Doctor broke down the newsroom numbers and noted that a number of employees are heading to Los Angeles to staff the newly-launched LA Register, another daily Freedom recently launched. Meanwhile, roughly 20 are employed at the Long Beach Register. “To be sure, it would be still one of the largest hirings of journalists in the U.S., when the vast majority of metro papers are either flat or shrinking. It’s simply worth noting that the intensive upgrading of Orange County coverage — the early strategy’s hallmark — has been significantly downgraded,” he wrote.
Reports from Doctor and David Carr of The New York Times indicate finances are tight due to a lawsuit against Freedom, as well as struggles building circulation at the daily. The paywall erected on the Orange County Register site also didn’t work out as planned. But both media observers also describe Kushner as a confident man, and indeed he has continued his expansion. Freedom recently took over management of the South Bay-based Easy Reader weekly newspaper and three affiliated magazines.
Although Kushner’s print-focused plan continues to be something industry professionals look to with skepticism, there’s hope in those observing eyes, as Doctor noted to The New York Times: “Is it a long-term strategy with short-term financing? It would be a tragedy if that were the case, because he [Kushner] has been the boldest operator out there and people want it to work.”
