The Register is making a notable change starting Tuesday morning, followed by exciting updates to many of our 24 community newspapers this week.

The Register is narrowing the width of the newspaper page by one inch. This is a decision driven purely by economics. Recent price increases in newsprint would impact our business by more than $6 million if we continued to print at the same size and quantities we did last year. 

You may not even notice a difference. It’s important to note we are not eliminating any of your favorite columns or features by moving to a slightly smaller frame. Type size in the paper remains the same and so does the height of the pages. (You might notice slight narrowing of text in comics, some Marketplace graphics and some tabular sports results – and temporary narrowing of type on the Weather page and daily TV grids.)

The Register’s award-winning news coverage, photography, graphics and advertisements have the same presentation and color you’ve come to expect each day.

Virtually every daily metropolitan newspaper in the United States has moved or soon will move to this new size. Some are going even smaller.

Many readers in other markets prefer the narrower format, as it is easier to handle in a coffee shop, airplane or other close quarters.

We are living in a time of rapid change, so we must consider new ways to publish our newspapers. It’s exciting to see how our journalists and sales force have sharpened their focus on what we do best — delivering relevant local news and information. Hopefully you will notice the steps we’ve taken in that regard.

One way we’ve done this is by expanding our community coverage on ocregister.com. We now update our city-by-city news more frequently on the Web, and you can see the fruits of this work by pulling up your city in a drop-down menu within a blue Local News banner on the ocregister.com home page. 

Another big part of our plans to publish more hyper-local content occurs this week, when we introduce a new look and feel in our community newspapers. Articles in each community newspaper will adopt a quick-read format with more photos, graphics and color.

We launched this new format in Irvine and San Clemente earlier this year, and readers have told us they like it. We also researched this format extensively prior to our launch of OC Post a few years ago, a product driven by readers’ calling for a quick-read paper that fits their busy lifestyles.

Our community newspapers will be more accessible as well. In addition to our distribution inside the Register to subscribers, we are adding nearly 700 news racks across the county to expand free distribution to nonsubscribers. Four community newspapers are adding a second distribution day — the Saddleback Valley News, Anaheim Hills News, Yorba Linda Star and Placentia News Times. We’re also adding distribution in more than 200 retail locations in those four geographic areas.

As always, we appreciate your feedback on these endeavors and how we’re doing. Thank you for your support.

Terry Horne
President and publisher
Orange County Register Communications

Here, expectant moms to seasoned parents can ask questions and share insight on our parenting forums, enjoy funny and endearing blog entries written by Register moms and dads, find a variety of family-related events around Orange
County.

Check it out, and sit for a bit. Give some advice. Ask for some advice. Find a good day camp for your kid for summer. It’s all happening at ocmoms.com

The Mom Blog is The Register’s new blog devoted entirely to parenthood, offering moms (and dads too) various “peeps into parenting.” A cast of eight moms and two dads make up the blog team, who share their everyday challenges and victories in the parent hood.

The blog is located on the Family page of our Web site. Find it here.

Among the bloggers: Roxanne Hack shares about pregnancy and impending motherhood. Jenny Angelici muses about becoming a mom in her 40s. Nikki Batalis explores children’s books. Marla Fisher relays her adventures as a single, 50-something mom of two adopted kids. Morgan Sales rants about being a dad to two teenage girls.

Please join the conversation.

Terry Horne, the new publisher of The Orange County Register, said in a recent interview (click here to read the story), that he’s pursuing a three-pronged approach:

1) The subscription-based Register newspaper will include premium content targeted at a mostly older readership.

2) Free community weeklies will go to a broader base with a hyper-local focus.

3) www.ocregister.com will provide free content to a younger audience.

Other changes on the horizon include:

A narrower paper, with the width of each page shrinking by 1 inch in late summer or fall.
Joining a consortium with other companies, to be announced soon, that will share advertising and news content.

Considering the expansion of the free Irvine World News/OC Post tabloid to five days a week from three and possibly rolling out the concept in other communities.

A new Web site, www.OrangeCounty.com, which will be a destination portal for people around the world planning to visit or move here.

Check out ‘SoCal Sports Now,’ our weekday outlet for news, notes and commentary from the Register sports staff — updated throughout the day.

SOME OF WHAT’S COMING THIS WEEK:

Columnists Kevin Ding, Mark Whicker, Randy Youngman, Marcia C. Smith and Jeff Miller start your day.

Lakers Looking ahead to the second half of the season.

UCLA Alfred Aboya takes our ‘Pop Quiz.’

WHAT YOU MISSED LAST WEEK BUT CAN STILL SEE ONLINE:

Jeff Miller On baseball’s dirty, disgusting day on Capitol Hill.

TV-radio The scoop on Jerry West’s upcoming appearance on FSN.

You make the call Should Kobe Bryant have surgery on his injured hand?

Michael Lev Why Lamar Odom is better off as the Lakers’ No. 3 option.

USC Where Sedrick Ellis and other Trojans prospects rank on NFL Network’s draft board.

• Dr. Gregory Evans, UC Irvine Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery Institute
• Dr. Laura Mosqueda, UC Irvine Senior Health Center
• Dr. Wadie Najm, UC Irvine Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine
• Dr. Charles Rosen, UC Irvine Spine Center
• Dr. Lynn Hunt, UC Irvine pediatrician
• Dr. Steven Abelowitz, Coastal Kids Pediatric Medical Group

 Check out the questions and the answers at Ask the Doctor. You’ll find this new feature in the Health & Fitness page on our Web site, which is part of the Life section. Here’s a link:

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/sections/life/healthfitness/

Thanks for taking the time to write to us.  I’m sorry many of you are disappointed in our changes.

I want to correct an erroneous impression some have about our owners. The Hoiles family that has owned the Register since 1935 still owns it. Investment partners have a minority share of the privately-held stock, but they are not calling any of the shots. Neither is the family, when it comes to the changes. Those are my decisions.

The Register is under economic duress. Those of you who are in business can understand what that means. Less than 15 percent of revenue of a newspaper comes from subscriptions. More than 85 percent comes from advertising. Large newspapers all across the country have been challenged by Internet competition for advertising. We have also been hit with huge declines in employment and real estate advertising for the past year — in the tens of millions of dollars range for the Register. In addition, there have been three price increases announced since the end of the summer for newsprint — a total possible impact of $5 million in additional expenses for the Register in 2008.

These are all tough things to work through at the same time that a general recession seems to have gripped the economy. I admit we’ve been facing some very difficult decisions. I can understand how many readers can take issue with various steps we’ve taken in recent months. We’ve taken those steps after much discussion, analysis and, frankly, hand wringing. We are trying to preserve jobs so we can continue to gather and distribute important information whether  online or in print.

Please don’t credit our decisions to greed. The family ownership has agreed to accept dramatically lower performance, both last year and in our projected 2008 business year. They have refused to force management to take some of the more drastic cost-cutting steps taken by many publicly owned newspaper companies.

We will work our way through this down period and when business gets better we will again expand the amount of space we give to news. And I’m sure editors will weigh carefully what content to add back to the Register. Your comments are duly noted.

Thank you for caring enough about the Register to send us a note. I appreciate it.

Terry Horne
President and Publisher
The Orange County Register

We have listened to your calls, e-mails and postings about our recent changes to the Register’s Local section. You have noticed that the section has gotten bigger, and appreciate the locally targeted ads and coverage of each local region. But you have made clear that you want the section organized better and that you don’t want to give up full, countywide coverage. Therefore:

>> Starting with the Feb. 1 edition, we have restored the popular “Our Towns” briefs from every city — organized by North, Central and South.

>> Page 1 of Local will present the most interesting countywide stories. We will bring you as much — or more — Orange County and local news as ever.

>> Inside, as always, you get Frank Mickadeit and your favorite countywide columns and features on Page 2, plus the weather page, Opinion, and your countywide obituary page.

>> Coverage closer to home will be labeled and begin on Pages 4 and 5. Coverage from the O.C. cities outside your home region will appear after that.

With these adjustments, we believe you will find your Local section newsier and more enjoyable than ever. We welcome your suggestions and comments.

As part of this streamlining initiative, we will eliminate most listings of stocks and mutual funds and stop publishing Marketplace as a separate section from Monday to Saturday. We will continue to have a stand-alone Marketplace section with the housing theme on Sundays.

Starting Jan. 30, you’ll find the Marketplace pages inside the same section as the front page.

The Marketplace pages will continue to include daily stock listings for Orange County’s biggest publicly traded companies and a daily market roundup with highlights on national stocks, currencies, commodities and interest rates. We will offer a complete listing of all stocks and funds on ocregister.com/money. For quotes by phone, call Tellme at 1-800-555-8355.

We’ll also continue to provide the same in-depth news coverage of the Orange County business community with a slightly revised theme lineup as follows:

Monday: personal finance and wealth

Tuesday: personal technology

Wednesday: real estate

Thursday: innovation

Friday: shops & restaurants

Saturday: small business

Sunday: housing

These changes reflect the realities of the digital age, with more and more advertisers and readers turning to the Internet as a real-time alternative to the services and information offered by newspapers.

To remain competitive, the Register increasingly must shift resources to the Web and mobile technologies while adapting our printed products to match the changing needs of our community.

We remain committed to serving the needs of Orange County as the most comprehensive and reliable provider of local news and information in print and on the Web.

Your suggestions and feedback will guide us as we work to transform our business and we invite you to post your input by clicking on the word “comments” that appears in blue below.

Our publisher, Terry Horne, also is emphasizing deeper local news coverage and seeking increased penetration for our newspapers at a hyper-local level.

Among the first changes announced is the merger of the OC Post and the Irvine World News starting in February.  Click here to see a news story on the merger.

Other Register initiatives will be announced in coming weeks, including details on plans to convert the Local news section into six geographic zones filled with more locally relevant content for each area.

We welcome your feedback on our plans, so please click on the word “comment” in blue below and share your thoughts.

Thanks!