While restructuring is rarely good news for workers, that is exactly the case at Orange County’s Excelsior Newspaper(60,000, weekly, Spanish). The paper’s general market counterpart, The OC Register is offering its 1100 employees a buyout in an effort to cut costs. The paper has also announced plans to expand its web presence. “Our CEO Terry Horne has made it clear that he sees Excelsior as a key growth area for the company,” publisher Julio Saenz tells Portada.”
Saenz says that as part of the restructuring, he will now report directly to Mr. Horne. The paper is also looking at increasing its frequency to twice weekly, at first, and then to three weekly editions. “What we are seeking to accomplish is to offer more content to our readers, while offering more value to our advertisers,” says Saenz.
Saenz was brought on-board last April by Excelsior, and he says that his first goal was to focus on boosting local advertising: “Having local advertisers makes the paper more of a resource for our readers, and shows national advertisers that you’re part of the community.” The next phase he says is to aggressively go after national advertisers. “I think that a lot of them are simply not familiar enough with our publication, and don’t know that we have six times the circulation of Hoy in Orange County.”
Excelsior is also seeking to boost circulation significantly to between 80,000 and 100,000, according to Saenz.
