We’ll Miss the World According to Hoiles

The neighborhood just got a lot less interesting. It’s like the Munsters moved out of the big old house up the street, and the Osmonds moved in. The new tenants probably will knock down the cobwebs and take the telephone out of the coffin.

The Orange County Register, family-owned since 1935 and not afraid to stand out in a crowd, is up for sale. No one knows who the buyer will be, but you can bet it won’t be anyone as distinctive as the original Hoiles family that put its libertarian/conservative stamp on the newspaper and, in no small measure, on the county that grew up with it over the decades.

It won’t be a flagship company that, as Freedom Communications once did, will hire consultants to ask employees such questions as, “If you could be any kind of fruit, what would it be?” Or that, as legend has it, long ago paid its employees in cash because the corporate philosophy disdained taking out taxes. Or that would acquaint employees with “libertarian school” where they could go to learn more about the corporate philosophy.

In more modern times, the Register eschewed some of those things, presumably under the guise of self-improvement. However, just hearing about some of these old tales for the first time last week -- as talk of the sale loomed -- leads me to lament their passing. I don’t even care whether they’re true or not.

The world is losing too many colorful characters -- at least, the good ones -- and it’s just as true in the news business. The prospective buyers mentioned for the Register are mainstream media companies -- solid, but not known for being colorful or unique.

Whether locals like the Register or not -- and I know both types -- the paper has an identity. I like the fact that while people say it preaches to a conservative readership, it has complained about the war on drugs and about stricter sanctions against immigration. I get a kick out of writing obituaries about ordinary people that most papers wouldn’t consider.

That, to me, is a paper with a personality. If it is too doctrinaire on its op-ed pages, that strikes me as a personality quirk rather than a journalistic sin.

Will new ownership change the Register? Probably, even while saying that it won’t. Will it improve it? Possibly, but at what cost?

I toiled at the Denver Post in the early 1980s when the longtime local ownership reverted to the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co. The paper improved journalistically but lost some of its Rocky Mountain flavor as new editors from Texas applied their own coat of paint to its pages.

The Tribune Co. has hardly ruined The Times since buying it three years ago, but most employees probably wish it still was owned by a longtime California family instead of a Chicago-based media giant. It’s not that the paper smacks of Chicago; it’s just that, you know, the old owners are gone and not coming back.

So it will be for the Register. The “For Sale” sign is up, and new owners are heading to town.

They won’t tear the house down and start over. But my guess is it won’t be as much fun to walk by. It’ll be a lot harder as time goes by to hear the playful old ghosts of yesteryear rummaging about inside its doors.

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Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821, or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.