He's Baaack! Tom Johnson Takes Over "The Current"

TOM JOHNSON RETURNS
As announced in the Orange County Register yesterday, HERE, former Daily Pilot publisher Tom Johnson has reached an agreement with the Orange County Register to run the Newport-Mesa weekly publication, The Current.


GOOD NEWS FOR US
This is good news for those of us who read the Register regularly. The Current needed some serious freshening and Johnson's the man to do it. If you only read a local newspaper one day a week The Current might have met your needs. It has basically been a summary of news from the area over the past several days. Seldom did we see new content. In the article Johnson promises a new look and, we hope, fresher content.

THE FACE OF LOCAL NEWS
Tom Johnson has been a pillar of the Newport-Mesa community for decades. During his tenure as publisher of the Daily Pilot he was THE face of local news. As the Los Angeles Times - the Pilot's parent company - began to have financial difficulties in the last part of the last decade Johnson found himself at odds with the direction planned by the then-owners and left.

HE AND LOBDELL
He next surfaced in 2009 when he and former Daily Pilot Editor and current Costa Mesa Director of Communications, Bill Lobdell, launched a start-up online newspaper, The Newport-Mesa Daily Voice. That effort lasted a few months, then it folded up and the concept morphed into the Newport Beach Independent - a hybrid online/weekly publication. Costa Mesa coverage was abandoned. He left "The Indy" last year.

WISHING HIM WELL
We hope Tom Johnson is able to build The Current into a strong, locally-focused publication. With Daily Pilot resources spread thin and its recent expansion into Irvine, there seems to be a need for a tighter local news focus in our area. We look forward to watching this new enterprise evolve.