N. Christian Anderson III, publisher of The Orange County Register, will leave the company Sept. 15.
He will be replaced by Terry Horne, publisher of the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Ariz., which also is owned by the Register’s parent company, Freedom Communications Inc. in Irvine.
Anderson, 57, leaves a long legacy at the Register, which he joined in 1980 at age 30 as the paper’s editor. Under his leadership, the paper won its first Pulitzers in 1985 and 1989.
He moved up the executive ranks in 1994 as publisher of The Gazette, Freedom’s newspaper in Colorado Springs, before returning in 1999 as the Register’s publisher – the first person outside the founding Hoiles family to lead the company’s flagship paper.
This year Editor & Publisher magazine named Anderson publisher of the year.
Horne joined the East Valley Tribune as publisher in April. He previously worked at The Arizona Republic, where he was vice president of community newspapers.
Prior to that he was vice president and chief operations officer of Swift Newspapers in Reno. He also worked for Clarksburg Publishing Co. in West Virginia and Thomson Newspapers Inc.
Chris Anderson spoke at my college commecement at CSUF in 1985 and gave one of the most boring speeches I’ve ever heard. Still, he was was able to grow the Register’s circulation to surpass the L.A. Times’ O.C. edition. I attribute this more to the stupidity of Times’ management than to any brilliance on Chris’ part.
I can remember when the Register was skimpy on news and had many typos. Chris made the OC Register a world-class paper. Thank you for a job well done! If anyone has any doubt they should pick up a copy of the San Diego Union-Tribune or the San Francisco Chronicle and compare the quality and content to the OC Register.