Conventional media wisdom posits several ways for a newspaper to commit suicide. It can drive up costs by multiplying staff and pagination. It can prioritise print over digital. It can erect a hard paywall to seal itself from the internet.

Or, if you are the Orange County Register, you can do all three. The California daily did so almost exactly a year ago, prompting astonishment and morbid curiosity. How long would it last? In a crisis-stricken industry more accustomed to death by a thousand cuts, the Register, which dates back a century, at least promised a dramatic and original demise.

But this week, as the paper prepares to celebrate the experiment's first anniversary, it appears to be thriving. "It's working," marvelled the editor, Ken Brusic. "We believe that this will work."
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Register staff – the newsroom has doubled to 360 in the past year – exude giddy, wary optimism that their paper has a bright future. Instead of rewriting stories they are filling multiple new sections with original reporting. "Feel the weight. This has 10 sections – and on a Tuesday. If it hit your cat, you'd kill it," said Rob Curley, deputy editor of local news.