Categories: OLD Media Moves

OC Register lays off investigative business reporter Campbell

Ronald Campbell, an investigative business reporter at the Orange County Register who has been at the paper for more than 26 years, was laid off on Thursday.

In a message on Facebook, Campbell wrote:

I was laid off today from the Orange County Register, along with 35 or so other people. Many of them, like me, had been there for years. Time for another chapter.

Campbell was a member of the Register’s investigative team, assigned to data journalism and business. He started the paper’s program in computer-assisted reporting. He’s written stories on topics ranging from immigration to profiteering in the sale of human cadavers to investment fraud and charity.

Campbell joined The Register in April 1986. Before that, he worked at the Bakersfield California and the Daily Republic. He is a graduate of Santa Clara University.

Campbell has won the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, as well as awards from the National Education Writers and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

There were no layoffs on the Register’s business news desk, according to a newsroom source.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.