Where’s the News?

The OC Register’s new owners are celebrating the completion of their first year, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/spitz-518480-kushner-subscribers.html

Their editors frequently publish letters that praise their own paper. However, letters on local politics don’t get in. In Mission Viejo, no letter critical of City Hall has been published since April 2008. When an OCR / Saddleback Valley News reporter exposed corruption in City Hall, city manager Dennis Wilberg met with newspaper administrators. The resulting favorable bias toward City Hall demonstrates advertisers (such as the city of Mission Viejo) censor newswriting. http://www.missionviejoca.org/News/2010_Q4/2010-10-09/buzz/buzz.html

The new OCR owners are succeeding with their print advertising business, and happy articles, feature stories and advertorials dominate the space filled by reporters.

OCR’s front page on Aug. 9 showcased a photograph of Muslim men, and the reporter assigned to Mission Viejo frequently airs her perspectives as a Muslim. For OCR, that’s “news.” For city coverage, City Hall’s puff pieces appear below the reporter’s byline, and that’s “news.” SVN on Aug. 9 had a front-page story attributed to the same reporter about the Mission Viejo dog park. The published cost of $888,888 is false. That’s just the amount of the current contract. The OCR / SVN calculator evidently resets to zero each time a new reporter writes about the cost of the dog park.

Last November, OCR anointed candidates in local races as “Register endorsements.” Mission Viejo Councilman Frank Ury was picked by his OCR columnist buddy, despite voting to give lifetime medical benefits to council members. The columnist praised Ury for not accepting union money, but no candidate in the race accepted union money. Had OCR vetted candidates, it would have discovered Ury’s abominable record: http://www.missionviejoca.org/html/article463.html

While OCR’s columnist was endorsing self-serving politicians, OCR’s science editor attributed wildfires to global warming http://www.ocregister.com/news/climate-362060-change-global.html , The OCR education reporter wrote a one-sided story about Common Core in which criticism was called rumor and myth http://www.ocregister.com/articles/common-383867-core-standards.html

When OCR’s owners say the paper has grown, they’re not talking about readership. They mean size of the paper. While the paper is bigger and it looks better, the bulk of it is flyers, magazines, advertorials and other forms of advertising. If the paper grows much more, the “thud” when the Sunday morning paper hits the driveway will wake the neighborhood.