Register's new owner unveiling big changes, makes staffers 'crazy'

Update: Register can fill 25 newsroom positions, editor says

The past week of meetings with the Orange County Register's new owner, Aaron Kushner, has been "just absolutely crazy," as a staffer told the OC Weekly. How about this: an emphasis on the print paper. The possible hiring of full-time food and movie critics, something the old Register leadership had done away with. (We already told you about the plans to hire a Dodgers writer.) Also: doing away with most blogs, no more focus on feedlng mobile phones, a paywall on the web and more editors sent back to reporting.

And a switching of some reporters' beats to others (we've been told a big name, but won't release it until it gets announced, if the reporter's hysterics don't convince Kushner & Co. otherwise to leave them where they currently are).

And the paywall. Kushner actually thinks that people will pay for the Register both as a print product and online, despite the continued crashing of print. "That strategy, more than anything--to focus on print--are what people are freaking out about," said a source. "In this day and age, that's lunacy."

Should be interesting.