Freedom's leaders bullish on future

“If we can figure those things out we can make money on it,’’ Freedom CFO Mark McEachen said Tuesday in an interview with The Orange County (Calif.) Register.

McEachen and interim CEO Burl Osborne both said that emerging from bankruptcy will be a new chapter for the Irvine, California-based company. Freedom owns 33 newspapers, including the Sun Journal, the Havelock News and the Jones Post. It also owns eight television stations and other related companies.

“There will be no dictation — at least with the current management — on positions to be taken by the editorial staff,’’ McEachen said. “They will be free to edit, comment and cover local events as they see fit, always remembering that we have to be relevant to our readers and advertisers.”

The company’s top two executives also said that they will be looking to expand, not to contract, Freedom.

“We’re looking at all opportunities,” Osborne said in a telephone interview with the Register. “It’s clear there are opportunities for improvement in newspapers around the country, including Southern California.”

Media companies throughout the nation have seen their revenues drop. In response, they have made deep cuts in personnel.

While McEachen would not rule out further cost-cutting, he said that Freedom did its share of downsizing in the past year.

“We’ll obviously look at places where there is excess fat,’’ he said. “We’ll continue on a diet. But there is no intention of slashing and burning, in fact we want to enhance the properties. We want to continue to grow.’’

That growth, he said, will come both in the digital and print side of the business.

“We can offer various opportunities to the younger generation,’’ he said as an example. He suggested that Freedom will be looking to deliver information on various mobile and web-based devices.

“If we can have that content and that news brought forward not just print-first but in tandem with print, I think Freedom will continue to prosper,’’ he added.

News organizations have been experimenting with requiring readers to pay for Web content. The new owners of Newsday in Long Island, N.Y., for example, are requiring a paid Web site subscription from anyone going to the site who is not a subscriber of the paper or of the cable television service that the owners of the paper run.

McEachen does not believe such a practice will work.

“I personally don’t believe in pay walls,’’ McEachen said. But that doesn’t mean Freedom’s content should or will be given away for free. He believes the company must continue to work with so-called aggregators — such as Google and Yahoo — to showcase its content.

McEachen also said the newspaper is not going anywhere.

One of the company’s challenges with newspapers, he said, is to “be relevant to those who are not baby boomers and above.’’

That means, he said, focusing in on what he views as a strength of newspapers — investigative reporting. He sees the Web site and vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook, texting and e-mails as the places for breaking news and continuing updates. And for more in-depth information and investigations, McEachen wants people to turn to newspapers.

Savings will continue to be necessary to keep print profitable, he said.

“We have to look at bringing down the backend costs while spending more money on the content side. If we can do that I think that’s the recipe for success.’’