[3] The Register, published in Orange County, California, is owned by the private equity firm Alden Global Capital via its Digital First Media News subsidiaries.

Faced with an aggressive push into the county by the Los Angeles Times under publisher Otis Chandler, Threshie brought in 30-year-old N. Christian Anderson III as editor.

It won additional Pulitzers in 1989 for beat reporting by Edward Humes on U.S. military problems with night-vision goggles and in 1996 for an investigation into Ricardo Asch's fertility clinics.

In 1999, Threshie became chairman of the board of Freedom Communication and Anderson returned to the Register as publisher and chief executive officer.

The Register had its first significant staff reductions in December 2006, with 40 newsroom employees taking buyouts, along with a small number of layoffs.

By April 2007, The Orange County Register had made additional staff cuts to help maintain shareholder profit, which had averaged more than 20 percent annually in the preceding five years.

In June 2008, KTLA, The Los Angeles Times and Fox News reported that the Register had begun a one-month trial of outsourcing some layout and copy-editing work to India to save costs.

[8] The trial was not deemed a success, and editing returned to Register In spring of 2009, Freedom Communications instituted furloughs for all employees nationwide, followed by a permanent 5% pay cut starting in July 2009.

News reports in August 2009 indicated that Freedom Communications planned to file for bankruptcy and turn control of its publications, including The Orange County Register, over to its lenders.

[10] In the column,[11] Whicker wrote about various sporting events that had occurred over the preceding 18 years, and how they had been missed by Jaycee Dugard, a girl who had been kidnapped, raped, and forced to bear her kidnapper's children.

The column generated criticism in blogs such as Deadspin,[12] who called it "the single worst piece of journalism ever committed on this page", and The Huffington Post.

It was focused solely on community news, including city government, public and private education, local sports coverage, business and entertainment as an intended competitor to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

"[17] Five months later, Kushner announced in a company memo that the Los Angeles Register was ending publication effective immediately.

[21] On March 10, 2015, Aaron Kushner and his partner, Eric Spitz, resigned from executive duties at the paper and Freedom Communications Inc.

[22] On February 12, 2016, Freedom Communications announced that The Orange County Register and the Press-Enterprise along with its websites, community weeklies and the two Spanish-Language weeklies Excelsior in Orange County and La Prensa in the Inland Empire, were being placed in a "stalking horse" auction after the company declared bankrupt at the end of 2015.

[23] On Sept. 21, 2016, it was announced that the Register would move its headquarters to 2190 Towne Centre Place, Anaheim, and vacate its longtime home at 625 N. Grand Avenue, Santa Ana.