MEDIA : A Year Later, Journal Has Made Progress but Still Has Troubles

A year after it was purchased by Kansas City real estate magnate Larry Bridges, the Orange County Business Journal seems to have its act together on the editorial side. But things have been a little more difficult on the business side, and the weekly newspaper is now searching for a publisher to revamp the sales and marketing efforts.

The paper has been without a publisher since June, when Charles Heschemeyer left to return to his roots on the editorial side of the business journal world. (He is now editor of the San Jose Business Journal). Orange County Business Journal President Paul Schwartz, a college buddy of Bridges’ with no previous publishing experience, has been in charge since then.

Schwartz, a 37-year-old entrepreneur who has been involved in a variety of industrial and financial ventures, said the paper was not quite meeting the expectations of the reclusive Bridges, who also owns the Los Angeles Business Journal and the San Diego Business Journal.

Schwartz is clearly unhappy with some of marketing efforts he inherited at the Orange County Business Journal, such as an unconventional program to distribute the paper to homes in certain wealthy neighborhoods. The paper has also had considerable turnover in its advertising staff, and it is not clear how successful it has been in converting its 20,000 subscribers to paid circulation.

Still, Schwartz points out, the publication had to be completely revamped and converted from biweekly to weekly after it was purchased from its founder last year. “Six months from now, we’ll be ahead of what was expected,” he said. Advertising sales for the fall are strong, he said, and 12,000 of the subscriptions are now either paid or requested.

Editorially, the paper now adheres to a formula that has been proven at the Los Angeles Business Journal and dozens of other city business journals around the country. It can boast of far more serious and informative coverage of the local business scene than its previous incarnation.

But Orange County has traditionally been a graveyard for local business publications--four previous ventures have failed. Although local media watchers say the Orange County Business Journal’s link to sister papers to the north and the south help give it a strong market position, whoever takes the publisher’s post at the weekly won’t have an easy task.