Retorts: The News is sad

A bit of local history passed into, well, the past recently.

The Orange County News appears to have closed its Garden Grove office and consolidated its operations in Seal Beach along with other publications owned by Integrity Newspapers.

Founded in 1909 as the Garden Grove News, it was the longest-operating business in the city for over a century.

I have a great deal of emotional connection to the News. When our family moved into Garden Grove in 1960, we signed up for “the local paper,” which then was The Daily News. Its growth from a local weekly to a daily (six days a week) matched the expansion of Orange County during the postwar boom of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.

It was locally owned until 1952, when it was purchased by the Vancouver Sun. Seeing the growth of the area, the new owners expanded the News to twice a week (Monday and Thursday) and then to daily in 1956, just as Garden Grove incorporated into a city.

The Daily News changed its name to The News and was purchased in 1962 by the Ridder newspaper chain. Still growing, the paper was the second-largest in Orange County, trailing only The (Santa Ana) Register.

Hoping for further expansion, the Ridders rebranded the paper in 1964 as The Orange County Evening News. That was the peak. Competition from the Los Angeles Times’ new Orange County edition cut the paper to three times a week in 1970 and twice a week in 1974.

I was the last editor of the OCEN. I left to start the Garden Grove Journal, creating a competition between the GGJ and OCN that lasted for 40 years.

Competition, but never really the enemy. I always retained a nostalgic longing for those days on Century Boulevard working for the paper I grew up with.

I guess The Tribune is the last paper in town, even if we “print” on electrons. Newspapers are dying and I think we are all poorer for it. They’re dying … but not just yet.