The Orange County Register is looking to expand to Los Angeles county.
Aaron Kushner, the co-owner of the paper, announced the plans in a statement published in a news article by the Register on Thursday evening. “It will be a daily newspaper of not quite the heft of the Orange County Register,” he said.
He stated that the Los Angeles Register, as the edition will be titled, hasn’t set a specific launch date. The article notes that the publication’s content will be provided by OC Register reporters who are based in Los Angeles.
EARLIER: What Tribune’s Planned Split Means for Its Newspapers
Kushner, who led a group that purchased the Register in June 2012, has since unveiled ambitious plans for the newspaper. The new owners have added new print sections filled with more content, hired dozens of additional employees (including Times sports columnist T.J. Simers) and added a paywall for online content.
The expansion included the August 2013 launch of a daily newspaper edition in Long Beach and the acquisition of the Riverside Press-Enterprise in late November.
Earlier this year, Kushner had been reported as interested in acquiring The Los Angeles Times from Tribune Co., which is planning to spinoff its newspaper assets into a separate entity called Tribune Publishing.
The Register‘s owners have consistently articulated a print-centric approach, making the Register a case-study for observers who have tracked the publication’s progress as many daily papers shift toward digital-first.
The new owners have have been criticized for parts of their growth strategy. In March, a Los Angeles Times article critiqued the Register for blurring the lines “between advertising copy and news stories” with stand-alone sections devoted to Chapman University and UC Irvine that were paid for by the schools.
