About 80 to 90 employees from The Orange County Register and its affiliated publications will be laid-off. President and Publisher Terry Horne blamed the cuts on declining advertising revenue. The cutbacks are scheduled to be completed tomorrow. This is the third round of layoffs in a year. The company also did a voluntary severance program to cut staff in 2006.
According to the OC Register, in this round of layoffs managers protected basic reporting and editing staff. They targeted high salary employees, in order to lay-off fewer people. The company has tried other cost reduction measures to avoid layoffs. Earlier this year, the OC Post was cut back from a six to a three-day-a-week tabloid and the Register newspaper’s business coverage was merged inside the main news section, eliminating the Business Monday tabloid.