New CEO for Freedom Communications

Freedom Communications, the Irvine-based publisher of the Orange County Register, promoted its magazine division head Tuesday to president and chief executive officer of the media company.

Samuel C. Wolgemuth, 56, succeeds James N. Rosse, 67, who has served as Freedom’s CEO since 1992 and announced his retirement plans last year. The appointment takes effect Oct. 1.

Wolgemuth joined Freedom in 1995 as president of the company’s fledgling magazine unit, building the division from three titles to a high of 20, including World Trade Magazine, Home Office Computing and P.O.V. Magazine. Last month, Freedom sold World Trade and several other titles to Michigan-based Business News Publishing.

“Our goals are to continue to grow the company and do the best job we can of serving the community,” Wolgemuth said Tuesday.

Much of the growth, he said, will likely occur in Freedom’s magazine and Internet-based units. “It’s no secret that newspapers and television are not growing very fast,” Wolgemuth said.

To achieve those goals, Wolgemuth said he plans to spin off the Web sites of many of Freedom’s newspapers and magazines into separate, independently operated businesses that will be free to pursue commercial opportunities without the constraints of their print-based parents.

“If a Web site is the slave to the print product, it never realizes its potential,” Wolgemuth said. He said the Register’s Web site would be spun off into a stand-alone business in the near future.

Before joining Freedom, Wolgemuth led a business and technical publishing group at Simon & Schuster, where he oversaw 13 companies with a total of $500 million in revenue and 2,800 employees.

Freedom publishes 27 daily newspapers, including the Register, and 35 weeklies. The company also owns eight television stations.

The appointment is the latest is a series of management changes for the media company. In November, R. David Threshie, longtime publisher of the Register, left the post to become chairman of parent Freedom Communications. He was replaced by N. Christian Anderson, the current publisher of the Santa Ana-based newspaper.

The privately held company does not release profit figures, but Wolgemuth said net income grew on average more than 10% annually during the last five years, a level he hopes to maintain.

A resident of Coto de Caza, Wolgemuth and his wife have four children.