Orange County Register bringing back daily business section

The Orange County Register, acquired earlier this year by new owners with a more traditional approach to newspapers, plans to launch a standalone business section by late September at the latest, according to a source at the paper’s business news desk.

The new business section is part of the paper’s plans to beef up its coverage, which will include hiring approximately five new staffers for the business news desk. The Register is currently looking to hire a business editor.

The Register cut its standalone section in 2008. In 2009, it brought back a standalone section called Marketplace that ran on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In 2010, it launched a Sunday section focused on real estate coverage while also publishing content from The Wall Street Journal on that day.

While the Register’s business news coverage has been consumer oriented in the past two decades, the new section will be a lot more about local companies and strategy.

The new business section will be heavily themed, Talking Biz News is told, but not beat oriented. The themes will be on topics such as “leadership” and “lessons learned” and “growth,” which can encompass everything from real estate to a company’s growth plans.

The broad themes are being planned to allow multiple reporters to contribute instead of having just one reporter responsible for the “themed” story each week.

In addition, the new business section will bring back a local stock agate package.