LOS ANGELES — The owner of the Orange County Register plans a new daily newspaper in Los Angeles, the boldest step yet in an expansion across Southern California that emphasizes printed publications while others in the industry are focusing on digital.

The new seven-day-a-week paper will be known as the Los Angeles Register, Freedom Communications CEO Aaron Kushner told The Associated Press on Thursday night, a few hours after announcing the move to his staff in the Orange County Register’s newsroom.

In addition, Kushner said the Register would open an unspecified number of Los Angeles community weeklies.

Kushner didn’t give many specifics about plans for the paper but said it will be launched “quickly” and will be widely distributed in Los Angeles County. The Register’s story said the paper would begin publication early next year.

The announcement follows Freedom’s recent purchase of the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the largest daily newspaper in California’s Inland Empire east of Los Angeles, and last summer’s launch of a new daily newspaper in Long Beach, a city of 470,000 between Orange County and Los Angeles.

Ken Doctor, a newspaper industry analyst with Outsell Inc., said the move may be an attempt to find new revenue to cover Freedom’s fast-growing costs, but it’s startling nonetheless.

“Aaron Kushner and Freedom Communications are making the most contrarian play in American newspapers,” Doctor said. “While newspapers overall are receding and retracting and cutting, he is in expansionist mode.”