Editor and Publisher is reporting that the Orange County Register is laying off 110 by Friday.  We should remember that their parent company a few months ago launched a pilot program to outsource some editing to India, in addition to also sending some pages for pagination overseas as well.  A flat world indeed!

OCR Publisher Terry Horne:

“This isn’t necessarily just to improve profitability, we have to become a different kind of company,” Horne said. “We will be more focused on Interactive and make more of an effort in the print business.”

Apparently online revenue (excluding employment) is up 69.3% over last year, which would seem to be good news.  The problem is they’ve lost 15% circulation in year on year stats from Sept. 30th.   On top of that, this is the 4th round of layoffs this year alone, which from personal experience I can tell you creates a bunker mentality, and absolutely kills any esprit de corps the organization had left.

It really seems like their flailing around here.  After all, whenever we hear “Doing more with less”, which is just what they are saying when they cut people to “make more of an effort in print”, we’ve got to snicker.  Easy words to say, much harder to do, especially if you’re the guy who’s just been asked to do more with less people.