ROBERT PICARD, Communications professor, Cal State Fullerton

If you want to know the news of your neighbors, you might have to wait a while longer and look harder for it. Small, hometown daily papers are becoming extinct, squeezed by larger dailies. On Aug. 5, Freedom Newspapers will convert its Anaheim and La Habra dailies into weeklies. What happened? Robert Picard, a communications professor at Cal State Fullerton and editor of the Journal of Media Economics, spoke to Times correspondent Ted Johnson about the future of the newspaper business in Orange County.

What has happened to the hometown daily newspaper in Orange County?

The really profitable advertisers--the department stores, the malls, the grocery stores, the large auto dealers--have taken their advertising to the larger papers. The smaller papers then immediately lose a very profitable revenue stream. They can only count on the local advertisers within their community, and local advertising is really not enough to sustain a newspaper, given the costs of the publication.

What does this mean for the local reader?

When you look at the small dailies that exist, you find that maybe 10% is local coverage anyhow. The rest of it is non-local coverage. The question is, do you have local coverage lost when it goes to a weekly? The immediacy is lost. And in a large paper, instead of the local news being on page one, it is stuck back in some section of the paper.

Freedom Newspapers recently announced plans to convert dailies in La Habra and Anaheim into weeklies. Why did the company want to do this?

Operating a daily newspaper is very expensive. The cost of production and labor is onerous. The Register found that it was competing with itself. They don’t want to do that anymore, especially with the recession. They were looking for ways to reduce their overall costs and increase the profit margin. What you are seeing is a way not only to cut costs but to come back, or resolidify, their presence in north Orange County.

The Register also is replacing a few of its community news sections--its weekly, zoned editions--with other new weekly papers put out by Freedom. Why change?

The main reason for having a zoned edition is to try to get the local advertising that won’t advertise in the overall newspaper. They don’t draw their business for the entire area the newspaper covers. But it’s the identity issue. It’s very difficult to explain, ‘Yeah, we have the Register, but we have the local paper that comes out every Thursday.’ It’s still the Register and some people just don’t like it. Having your own local paper, even a weekly, is very strong and important. (The weeklies) have the name of the community on it. The identity makes it a lot easier to sell.

How does The Times fare with its zoned daily Focus pages in the metro section?

Again, it is perception. In many cases, by having that kind of zoning, you are going to get as much coverage as you are going to get elsewhere, but it is buried in the mound of paper that it comes in. So you are going to have to look for it. Some people don’t like to look that hard.

Is this circulation battle between The Times and the Register something that is being mirrored across the country?

Not too much. You see this happening in large cities where there is one daily newspaper and the weeklies in the suburbs are stepping up to fight them. And sometimes you see the large metropolitan daily strike back by trying to put community, weekly coverage together. But the situation here is much more complex because you are not dealing with one major daily, you are dealing with two major dailies coming in. You are dealing with a much larger geographic area than in most situations.

Will there ever be a winner in the newspaper battle here?

This battle is going to go on for a long time. Both companies are well positioned, both companies have great strength. The Register was a moribund paper for many years. Certainly throughout the 1980s they became very aggressive and suddenly realized they were going to have to fight for the market. And they fought back quite well. They positioned themselves very well. The question is, what do they do in the future? They have an advantage if they keep themselves highly competitive. I don’t think The Times is going to be able to dominate Orange County, particularly with the people who are farthest away from Los Angeles. The closer you are to the county line, the better chance The Times has to show strength there.

Will the Inland Empire be the next battleground for The Times or for the Register?

You already have two papers out there that are strong. You’ve got the Sun in San Bernardino, and you’ve got the Press-Enterprise in Riverside. The Times does circulate there now, but does not produce a local edition. The Register has basically abandoned the Inland Empire. They had a big fight in the 1970s over Corona, with the Press-Enterprise, and then did not look in that direction very strongly. The Times is better positioned for the Inland Empire than the Register is. Riverside and San Bernardino would seem to have a lot more in common with Los Angeles, although the commuting to Orange County is very large. So there are some possible ties there. . . . I don’t think you will ever see The Times dominate the Inland Empire. The question is, would The Times be willing to go out there to grab 25% of the market or 30% of the market?

Does the Orange County Newschannel, the 24-hour local cable news service started by Freedom, have any impact on the newspapers?

OCN is basically the news you get off CNN, on a county scale. It’s not much news actually. You get somebody out doing a 60-second spot. The amount of information that is in that might be three paragraphs in a newspaper. People who really want to know what is going on, the background, are going to get that from a newspaper.

On the trend of declining circulation at newspapers. . .

“It’s not the death of newspapers. We are going from newspapers having a mass audience back to having a more elite, specialized audience.”

On electronic newspapers. . .

“Everybody has been predicting this for years. But who is going to use electronic newspapers? Fewer than 20% of the households have personal computers. And it is not likely to grow in the near future.”

On hometown dailies going weekly. . .

“They are going to lose some local coverage. Even if you go with a weekly paper, the amount of coverage will be less unless (the paper) really puts in extra resources.”

On why readers want their own paper. . .

“Some people like to look at their community as the most important, and damn all the other communities around.”