Culture OC

To engage with Orange County’s artistic and cultural communities at every level by publishing news and critical analysis to encourage interest, participation, fellowship and dialogue.

Culture OC is Orange County's independent nonprofit newsroom dedicated to arts and culture journalism, covering theater, music, dance, visual arts, food and the region's broader cultural life through daily reporting, criticism and features. The organization was founded to fill a gap left by the decline of local arts coverage: by 2018, neither of the Orange County Register nor the Daily Pilot (OC's edition of the LA Times) employed a full-time staff arts reporter, and a third outlet that covered the arts, the OC Weekly, closed the following year.

Culture OC was founded in 2018 by Paul Hodgins and Heide Janssen, both former arts journalists at The Orange County Register, who set out to build a dedicated platform for arts journalism in the county. Early on, they were invited by the nonprofit newsroom Voice of OC to publish their team's stories under its masthead while they built out their coverage and staff. They assembled a team of veteran arts writers, many with backgrounds at the Register, the Los Angeles Times and OC Weekly, and their first stories published in September 2018, winning a National Arts Journalism Award within a year. The team grew steadily over the next several years, adding writers who went on to win state and national journalism honors, and two contributing writers were invited by the Library of Congress to include their reporting on the arts sector's response to COVID-19 in its Coronavirus Web Archive Collection.

In April 2023, the team announced it would launch its own independent nonprofit news platform under the fiscal sponsorship of OneOC, and the first stories published under the Culture OC masthead went live that September. Since becoming independent, Culture OC has continued to expand its reach. In 2024, the organization launched Culture Club Presents, a members' program that invites donors to attend private tours and events with Culture OC writers at cultural institutions across the county. In 2025, Culture OC formed a community media partnership with the OC Theatre Guild to publish additional theater coverage supporting the local scene.

Culture OC's writers have continued to win recognition from the Los Angeles Press Club, the California News Publishers Association, the Orange County Press Club and the Latino Journalists of California, among others, for reporting, criticism and feature writing spanning music, theater, visual art, food and profiles of the people shaping Orange County's cultural landscape.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
- Culture OC has been invited by Apple News to include our stories in its daily feed – a partnership expected to significantly expand our readership. We are rebuilding our website to accommodate this new distribution channel.
- Over the past year, Culture OC writers earned 24 journalism awards, including honors from the Orange County Press Club, the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards, and the California News Publishers Association. Since our founding, Culture OC writers have earned more than 100 awards for arts and culture journalism.
- Culture OC formed a community media partnership with the OC Theatre Guild, publishing stories written and edited by contributors selected and paid for by the Guild which expands our theater coverage and strengthening our ties to the local arts scene.
- We launched Culture Club Presents, a members' program that invites donors to join Culture OC writers at cultural events across the county, starting with a private tour of the Hilbert Museum led by founder Mark Hilbert and Senior Editor Richard Chang.
- To help keep our journalism free for readers, we launched Encore Content, a sponsored-content product produced in paid partnership with featured subjects. Each piece is written and edited with involvement from our editorial staff to ensure accuracy and clarity.

GOALS
- Hire a marketing and development specialist to help Culture OC capitalize on its new Apple News partnership, which is expected to expand our reach and open new advertising and membership revenue.
- Raise per-story rates and increase assignment volume for our writers, while expanding paid opportunities for student journalists moving through our pipeline. We are committed to keeping experienced reporters working while training the next generation to replace them.
- Move our editorial team toward fair, sustainable compensation. Two editors currently work 10 paid hours a week, and two work without pay, though all four work full time to keep Culture OC running. Our goal is to pay our staff what their work is worth.

Culture OC's near-term needs support a $150,000–$200,000 operating budget, with a longer-term goal of scaling to $1 million annually as our reach grows.
- Stabilize our operating budget at $150,000–$200,000 annually to sustain daily publishing and cover core staff costs.
- Hire a marketing and development specialist (20 hours/week, about $26,000 annually) to grow revenue from our new Apple News partnership.
- Increase story output to five stories per week, expanding coverage across Orange County's arts and culture scene.
- Raise contractor fees from $200 to $250–$350 per story or photo assignment to retain experienced freelance journalists and photographers, with a longer-term goal of hiring some contributors as staff writers.
- Move our editorial team toward fair pay: two editors currently work 10 paid hours per week, and two work unpaid, though all work full time.

Orange County California

The fundamental goal of Culture OC is to provide vital, open-access civic journalism that illuminates, connects, and holds accountable the rich cultural ecosystem of Orange County. Serving as a primary watchdog and chronicler for regional arts and public policy, Culture OC bridges critical news gaps left by shrinking legacy media.

By delivering rigorous, paywall-free coverage, our newsroom ensures that all residents, including working-class families, non-English speakers, and communities in historically disinvested areas of Orange County, have direct access to news that impacts their lives. Culture OC goes beyond traditional arts coverage to investigate municipal funding allocations, unpack cultural land-use issues, and amplify grassroots creators.

Ultimately, Culture OC exists to empower the public and strengthen regional civic infrastructure. Through multiple partnerships, community-centered reporting, and dedicated local government oversight, our organization works to build an informed, engaged electorate and ensure that public resources directly foster a vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cultural landscape for all of Orange County.

I am very proud to serve as Chair of the Advisory Board of Culture OC. As leader of the official nonprofit local arts agency for the County of Orange, I am probably one of the best-positioned and most-knowledgeable observers of the state of arts and culture journalism in our community today. The absolute decimation of such coverage over the past decade due to newspaper bankruptcies and consolidation left Orange County with virtually no news coverage on this beat, no feature writing, and no arts reviews. Yet ours is one of the most robust and vibrant arts communities in the nation. Perhaps the most important role of arts journalism is that it provides a platform for the discussion of those intangible feelings and thoughts that result from cultural experiences, the human interest stories that underscore both the commonality and exceptional talents of creative people, and educate the public about what it takes to ensure the continuity and health of those who produce and present the arts in our community. This is the role that Culture OC aspires to fulfill, and it is supported by artists, arts organization and university arts leaders, arts educators, and arts patrons. All of us in the Orange County arts community look forward to its continued evolution in the years ahead, and encourage those who care about this to contribute to its growth and development by providing the resources essential to achieve it.