Register lays off longtime columnist

[Editude]

Randy Youngman, whose column has lived on Page 2 of the Orange County Register for many years, has been let go as part of a wave of layoffs in Santa Ana: http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2012/03/randy_youngman_oc_register.php

 

[Armchair_QB]

Thought this was going to be about Marc Hansen.

 

[Mr. X]

How much was he making? That was probably a factor in his layoff. I would imagine he and Mark Whicker were the highest paid people in sports, possibly among the entire editorial staff.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

A good columnist -- never saw him have to fake expertise. And a cool guy, too.

 

[Biscayne]

Dumping longtime columnists takes a lot of the heart and soul out of a paper. I doubt that goes over big with the readers who are left, but I doubt the bean-counters care about that anymore.

 

[Colton]

So sorry to hear this about Randy. I have had some connections with him through the years.

Best of luck to him.

 

[SF_Express]

So sorry to hear this about Randy. I have had some connections with him through the years.

Best of luck to him.

This would be pretty much what I would say as well. Hope he lands on his feet.

 

[HanSenSE]

Maybe Whicker can write a column about what he's missed in real life since he's been a columnist at the Register.

 

[flexmaster33]

had a similar situation in Portland where a long-time columnist with the state's biggest paper, left to join another city paper (part of my chain) when it started up about 10 years back. Budget cuts eventually knocked him out there, and he's gone on to a successful role in radio and TV.

 

[Calvin Hobbes]

Sad to learn of this. Randy is a native of Ashtabula, Ohio, and started in the business as a high school kid in the sports department at The Star Beacon. That's where I got my first sport writing job, too.

 

[Birdscribe]

OK, knowing Randy and knowing the dynamic at the OCR, this may sound plaintive. I don't care. This is absolutely disgusting -- especially for a paper that is throwing its eggs in the local basket in waves.

Randy Youngman was one of the few people remaining at that paper who could write intelligently about everything from Cal State Fullerton baseball to the Ducks to local golf. Jettisoning him -- especially with his paper's one and only pro golf tournament (the Champions Tour's Toshiba Classic) looming in two weeks -- is not only ridiculous, but flat-out, ****ing stupid.

From Mark Whicker's Facebook page today:

Teemu Selanne, at today's Ducks morning skate: "I'm not talking to the media today because I'm honoring Randy Youngman."

As a longtime Kings fan, I detest the Ducks. But I just became a HUGE Selanne fan.

 

[playthrough]

Ditto. There's an athlete that gets it.

 

[MileHigh]

OK, knowing Randy and knowing the dynamic at the OCR, this may sound plaintive. I don't care. This is absolutely disgusting -- especially for a paper that is throwing its eggs in the local basket in waves.

Randy Youngman was one of the few people remaining at that paper who could write intelligently about everything from Cal State Fullerton baseball to the Ducks to local golf. Jettisoning him -- especially with his paper's one and only pro golf tournament (the Champions Tour's Toshiba Classic) looming in two weeks -- is not only ridiculous, but flat-out, ****ing stupid.

From Mark Whicker's Facebook page today:

Teemu Selanne, at today's Ducks morning skate: "I'm not talking to the media today because I'm honoring Randy Youngman."

As a longtime Kings fan, I detest the Ducks. But I just became a HUGE Selanne fan.

+2.

Terrible move. And good for Temmu. That's a class move.

 

[Rudy Petross]

Sadly, I heard Randy was a victim of webhits. He didn't have enough so he got laid off. In many of the idiotic moves the register (lower case intentional) has done, this is one of the tops. You are trying to be a local paper and you get rid of the one guy who was wired into the county like no other. Brilliant! I give the paper four years before it gets folded into the Pennysaver.

 

[iowagrad]

Thought this was going to be about Marc Hansen.

So did I.

 

[Joe Williams]

Not a fan of Page 2's in general. But a fan of Randy's and completely agree with those pointint out the institutional (local) knowledge that just got thrown overboard. One more in a long line of newspaper folks who are better than the organizations that shed them.

 

[gravehunter]

Dumping longtime columnists takes a lot of the heart and soul out of a paper. I doubt that goes over big with the readers who are left, but I doubt the bean-counters care about that anymore.

The OC Register lost its heart and soul many years ago.

 

[SF_Express]

Sadly, I heard Randy was a victim of webhits. He didn't have enough so he got laid off. In many of the idiotic moves the register (lower case intentional) has done, this is one of the tops. You are trying to be a local paper and you get rid of the one guy who was wired into the county like no other. Brilliant! I give the paper four years before it gets folded into the Pennysaver.

I'm old school, I'm a Randy fan from when I lived out there, and it's past time to say I'm sad of what has happened to the Southern California papers, and papers in general. But ...

This business of not enough web readers is going to be a factor in the future, like it or not. In the old days, you put writers in the paper, and except for focus groups and surveys or whatever, you simply assumed on faith that people were reading them. Even when a paper hired a huge name like Lupica, it was decidedly unscientific as to whether he added 50,000 readers or whatever, although I'm sure there were indications.

These days, you can break down who's reading what every single day, which authors, which column subjects, whatever. Exact numbers, and in relation to all the others.

So this is going to be the question (and I truly mean it as a question, not a rhetorical one to which I presume I have the answer). Let's say you've got a veteran guy, making a relatively high amount of money, and on a typical day, the numbers for the things he writes lag what 10 other writers are writing, and a single column ranks 57th on the breakdown of things people read that day.

I'll tell you my current answer: That that writer still serves a valuable role, that newspaper (or website) readership is a cobbled-together total of a lot of smaller things, and that there's a human factor too.

But if you're simply the people running the business, and the person making the most money in your department is writing the 57th-most-read story for your newspaper/website on a daily basis, what do you do about that?

I don't have an answer. But the notion that somebody is being read doesn't have to be taken on faith anymore; you've got hard numbers right in front of you.

So now what?

 

[SoCalDude]

"Web hits" are like getting a report card every day, and that sucks.
And probably what isn't considered is the impact that even the 57th most-read column can have when it deals with a specific topic, such as golf. I bet on a given day, golf ad revenue is more than 57th among all the ads in the paper/website.

 

[SF_Express]

"Web hits" are like getting a report card every day, and that sucks.
And probably what isn't considered is the impact that even the 57th most-read column can have when it deals with a specific topic, such as golf. I bet on a given day, golf ad revenue is more than 57th among all the ads in the paper/website.

A damn good point.