• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, December 16, 2013

No need to check your lenses -- you read that right: Freedom Communications is planning to launch a new metropolitan daily newspaper, the Los Angeles Register, in early 2014, CEO Aaron Kushner announced last week. The newspaper will be published seven days a week and distributed throughout Los Angeles County, Kushner told staffers at the Orange Country Register, which first reported the news.

Freedom is also planning to produce a number of community weeklies serving the Los Angeles area.
 
The LA Register will be published and distributed using the resources of the OC Register but have its own LA office, with dedicated Los Angeles reporters covering local beats, according to Kushner. He described it as “a daily newspaper of not quite the heft of the Orange County Register.”
 
The LA Register launch is just the latest in a series of acquisitions and new products from Freedom Communications, which has pursued an ambitious strategy of expansion since its acquisition by 2100 Trust, the investment group led by Kushner, in July of last year.

These moves include bulking up community papers, launching new newspaper-distributed magazines, the launch this summer of the Long Beach Register (which then added a Sunday edition) and the acquisition last month of The Press-Enterprise in Riverside from A.H. Belo in November.  
 
Launching a new daily newspaper for Los Angeles takes some gumption, considering the well-publicized woes of the city’s dominant Los Angeles Times, whose owner, Tribune Co., is seeking to spin off the newspaper along with the rest of its publishing division amid continuing print ad revenue declines.
 
The LAT has enjoyed a monopoly as the city’s own daily newspaper since the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner went out of business in 1989. However, Kushner said he sees an opening for a new newspaper focused on local coverage, versus what he portrayed as LAT’s more national scope and focus .