Long Beach Register stops publishing

The Long Beach Register is closing, the latest in a series of cutbacks by Orange County Register parent company Freedom Communications.

Freedom launched the Long Beach Register in August 2013 and the Los Angeles Register in April amid heavy marketing campaigns for the daily newspapers. But the experiment did not last long.

Freedom closed the Los Angeles Register in September, a few months after it had reduced publication of the Long Beach Register to Sundays only. On Sunday, Freedom spokesman Eric Morgan confirmed the company was ditching the Long Beach Register altogether.

“As of Dec. 28, the Long Beach Register is no longer publishing as a stand-alone section within the Sunday edition of the Orange County Register,” Morgan said. “We remain committed to serving Long Beach, and will continue covering the city’s major news developments in the Register and ocregister.com.”

Subscribers in Long Beach and surrounding cities will continue to receive the Orange County Register at their homes. The Orange County paper will also be available in single-copy machines and newsstands in the Long Beach area, the company said.

Orange County Register Publisher Rich Mirman said the closure of the Long Beach edition “is part of a larger strategy to focus on serving subscribers and advertisers of the Orange County Register and the Press-Enterprise [in Riverside].”

This was a rough year for Freedom.

The company closed the Long Beach and Los Angeles newspapers and imposed steep staff reductions at the Orange County Register and the Press-Enterprise.

In October, The Times sued the Orange County Register, saying it had failed to pay $2.5 million it owed The Times for delivering its papers. The Orange County Register hired a new delivery service, but subscribers said they went days without receiving their papers.

In November, the Orange County Register offered to pay reporters and other employees to start delivering papers themselves.

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