Orange County Register names Brusic editor
By Emily Laidlaw

Ken Brusic

Anyone who has seen Ken Brusic (MA '72) at work knows he doesn't slow down. An avid runner, Brusic, 59, was recently named editor and a senior vice president of The Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif.

Brusic says he has his hands full overseeing the paper's investigative work, attending daily news meetings, working with attorneys on legal matters and, basically, overseeing the gathering and presentation of news and information.

And it's no easy job, considering that includes being responsible for all the content that goes into the 301,000-circulation daily and the Sunday editions of the Register as well as the paper's 23 community weeklies, Orange County Home magazine and material on the OCRegister.com Web site.

"There's really no such thing as a typical day at my job," he says. But then again, the Register isn't your typical newspaper. While Brusic has been there, it has won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and was three times voted one of the 10 best newspapers in the country by the Society for Newspaper Design.

It's "the ability to think differently about what the business really is" that helps the Register build and keep a reputation as one of the country's most prestigious newspapers, Brusic says.

"We're more than a newspaper; we really are an information company," he says. "And one of the strong values of this company is this idea of lifelong learning. We encourage people to be able to stretch themselves in the work that they do and to keep learning."

Brusic attributes the success of the Register to its "wonderfully talented" staff. He says one of his favorite examples is when the Anaheim Angels won the World Series in 2002.

"We had a 100-page, full-color book out on the street for sale 24 hours after the game ended," he says, plus full coverage in the paper and on the Web.

Brusic says he attributes the successes in his career so far to persistence, a quality that became evident when he was rejected from CU's School of Journalism.

Brusic earned a bachelor's degree in English and a minor in education from the University of Denver but says he became frustrated with the work he was doing after college and got the idea that he wanted to work for a newspaper.

"I didn't have any qualifications to do that," he says, "so I went and knocked on the door of the journalism school. They took a look at my transcript and said, 'You're not good enough to come here.' "

Brusic says he decided to prove himself by taking journalism courses at the University of Colorado at Denver. After getting A's in all of them, he again knocked on the CU J-school's door and was accepted.

Brusic worked for the Boulder Daily Camera for six years following his graduation from CU. He left after being awarded a journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan. In 1978 and 1979 he was city editor of both the morning Wichita Eagle and the afternoon Wichita Beacon. He spent two years as an associate professor at the University of Montana, Missoula, then became a projects writer and editor for The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass.

He joined The Orange County Register, Freedom Communications' flagship newspaper, in 1989, moving up the ranks from projects editor to assistant managing editor in 1990, managing editor in 1992 and executive editor in 1997.

In April 2002, he was named senior vice president for content and business transformation at the Register before being named to his current positions.

But Brusic says the most remarkable thing about his career so far has been seeing how his work has helped people.

"There have been a number of things throughout my work in journalism where the validation that came from seeing their name and their work in a newspaper has encouraged people to be able do extraordinary things," he says.

One example, he says, is a story he did nearly 20 years ago when he was working in Quincy. Members of a Catholic church sponsored a walk for hunger. They decided to use half the money for their own parish – one of the poorest in the Boston archdiocese – and donate the rest to people in need. They decided the money should go to help people in Haiti.

Rather than just send the money, several of the women in the church decided to take it there. They wanted to make sure the donations made it to the backcountry parish for which it was intended, and they wanted to witness and minister personally to people in need.

Brusic and a photographer decided to go along to document the women's effort to provide aid in a country that was the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

"The women stared deeply into the souls of the people and returned inspired. My paper produced a special section that showed the depth of their concern and compassion," Brusic says.

"The story was a success and led to readers donating more money to the group. But even more important was that the story seemed to validate the group and its work. It seemed to make them feel legitimate and gave them a sense of self-confidence."

In the ensuing years, members of the group have magnified their efforts in the rural region of Haiti, he says. They built a 20-bed hospital, the only one in the region, developed an extensive immunization program, opened a dental clinic, funded medical educations for local Haitians and created a literacy program.

"Journalism can allow people to see possibilities. Words and images printed on newsprint can validate dreams. Hopes can become reality, the impossible possible," he says.

Although Brusic says he has not kept in touch with his graduate school colleagues, he remembers his days at CU fondly.

"The graduate school at the time was small enough where you really needed to participate in your own educational process," he says.

"Working in a seminar situation where people had expectations of you and other students were counting on you was really important for me," he says.

Brusic says he also misses the sense of openness and community in Boulder and the cross-country skiing from his home in the mountain above Boulder.

"In the wintertime when it snowed, we would keep our cross-country skis on the back porch and put them on and just go skiing," he says.

Brusic lives in Newport Beach. His wife, Pam, is an elementary school science teacher.

These days Brusic says he uses his spare time, when he can find it, riding his motorcycles, running, reading and spending time with his 14-year-old son, Mike.