Irvine Co. Weekly Performs a Delicate Balancing Act : Credibility, Power to Influence Are Goals of Irvine World News

By 1970, everything necessary for the Irvine Co.’s “totally planned community” was either on the ground, under construction or laid out on architect William Pereira’s celebrated drawing board.

Everything, that is, except for a means to influence the new city of Irvine’s least predictable component: the opinions of the people who were moving there.

The strategy to take care of that came from Gil Ferguson, freshly retired from the Marines and newly hired by the company’s public relations division. His idea: create a newspaper. Ferguson, now an assemblyman from Newport Beach, suggested transforming a subsidized company newsletter into a community weekly.

“It was up to me to project the image of the Irvine Co.,” Ferguson said. “The aim of the paper was to create a medium so people would know what the Irvine Co. was thinking but not be a spokesman for the company.”

Although Ferguson’s dream of daily publication has not been realized, the weekly Irvine World News has evolved into a profitable, multimillion-dollar newspaper that is unusual because it operates as a division of a development company while at the same time exerting great influence over the area it covers.

Ben H. Bagdikian, dean of the Journalism School at UC Berkeley and author of “The Media Monopoly,” said that although many businesses attempt to exercise influence through the press, the Irvine Co.’s ownership of the weekly represents “a special case” in contemporary American journalism “because the company has a greater degree of ownership and control” of the newspaper.

From the outset, according to current and former company officials, there has been discussion among company executives about the paper’s mission. Most said the goal has been to maintain the newspaper’s credibility and to not use it as a tool of the company.

But according to internal Irvine Co. documents made available to The Times, at least once, in 1985, the company tried to use the newspaper to influence the public concerning a project that was vital to the company.

In that instance, one company employee wrote five letters to the editor in favor of the project--the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor--while another company employee recruited people in the community to sign the letters, three of which were printed in the Irvine World News. (Two of the same letters appeared in the Orange Coast Daily Pilot, and one appeared in The Times.) The Irvine paper also editorialized at least two times in favor of the corridor, although editors said they were not directed to do so by company officials.

Most readers, including some Irvine activists who openly feud with the Irvine Co., agree that for the most part the community weekly maintains a balanced view in presenting neighborhood news and sports, stories of residents and their children and their accomplishments, as well as rewritten press releases from local businesses and schools.

Although it started as a small company newsletter operating at a loss, the Irvine World News now carries a healthy 70%-30% ratio of advertising-to-editorial content. Inserted each week is a cable television guide with listings for the Irvine cable TV system, which is also owned by the Irvine Co.

The paper, whose circulation area lies within the area served by the daily Times Orange County Edition and the Orange County Register, has been redesigned and has a new computer system. Presses have been purchased, and the staff has grown to 43 full- and part-timers, with paychecks--directly from the Irvine Co.--that compare favorably to other area weeklies.

Industry authorities and at least one interested buyer estimate the paper’s current market value at $3.75 million to $5 million, with the expectation that the publication will continue to grow with the city’s population and affluence. Its current circulation is 55,000.

The intimate relationship between the city and the newspaper, which is distributed free to residents, for years has left some Irvine Co. officials in a quandary over how--or whether--to use the paper.

Larry Thomas, Irvine Co. vice president for corporate communications who oversees the newspaper’s operations for the company, said he hears “grumbles that come up through the company” about how the newspaper is used--or not used.

One viewpoint was expressed recently by Ray Watson, who was executive vice president at the time and who is now vice chairman of the Irvine Co.: “I don’t mind trying to influence people, but you can’t tell them how to think.” At the same time, he said, “we shouldn’t be so self-conscious that we don’t say what we believe.”

This philosophy seems to have stayed the same over the years. Ferguson, whose only previous experience in journalism was overseeing a military base newspaper, said that during his tenure he debated the role of the paper with journalists Jeanne Keevil and Jerry Collins, who were handling most of the early editorial work.

“They were independent enough to make sure the paper didn’t look like a company paper. I credit them with keeping it from becoming a company paper in appearance,” said Ferguson, who served as editor and publisher.

“In a community where you have a high level of education, no one will believe a newspaper if you don’t have both sides,” Ferguson said. “It pained me to allow both sides. Sometimes we’d have to explain to management why it was important to allow someone who didn’t like us to go on at such great lengths.”

Ferguson’s fairness doctrine did not cover advertising. Because he believed that Irvine residents should do their shopping at Fashion Island, the Newport Beach shopping center owned by the Irvine Co., Ferguson said he “didn’t allow South Coast Plaza to buy ads. We didn’t say anything bad about them; we just didn’t let them advertise.”

(These days, “we’re interested in anyone who wants to use us,” including South Coast Plaza, said Tobey Anglin, the newspaper’s advertising director.)

As a practical matter, said Ferguson, who signed many of the early editorials, “we started the newspaper to sell incorporation of the city” to residents.

But immediately after the community incorporated, the paper stubbed its toe when most of the candidates it recommended for Irvine’s first City Council were rejected by the voters.

“That showed us the newspaper was better at influencing general ideas than specific candidates,” Ferguson said. “On a big issue or a big idea, a newspaper can explain it objectively. People turn off when you talk about an individual, but they don’t when you talk about an issue.”

By the time Ferguson left the paper in 1974 to start his own public relations firm, the newspaper was running about 20 pages a week and had become marginally profitable. In the late 1970s, the Irvine World News faced its first--and only--significant competition from a free weekly publication called Irvine Today. The paper, which was considerably less sympathetic to the Irvine Co., billed itself on the masthead as “Irvine’s Independent Newspaper.”

“We felt it was a good market for us, that there was room for a secondary paper not under the Irvine Co.’s influence, so we went in,” said Herbert Sutton, the publisher. But the paper ceased publication in 1982.

“We battled them for 3 1/2 years and enjoyed it,” said Tom Bennett, Irvine Today’s former editor who is now an assistant city editor at the Atlanta Constitution. It was, he said, a “unique situation for the principal landholder and land owner to publish a paper and deliver a point of view. It was a very challenging thing for them to not be blatant in presenting that point of view. Usually they succeeded pretty well.”

Regardless of that success, Bennett said, “it cannot be in the ultimate interest of the citizens of the city for that ax-grinding ownership to exist.”

The cards were stacked against the challenger from the outset, Bennett said. “The landholder is the lessee for the shopping center. The shopping centers buy advertising. It’s a self-fueling arrangement.”

This point was echoed by Eric Shuman, an experienced print and broadcast journalist who served variously as the Irvine World News’ editor and publisher. Shuman, who now teaches at Santa Monica City College, said editing a community newspaper owned by a major economic interest was an arrangement that “bothered me. I don’t think it’s normal. . . . I don’t think it’s a healthy situation. Who’s the supermarket going to (advertise) with, the paper owned by the landlord or someone else?”

Shuman, who wrote editorials, said: “You can assume what the company position would be on a particular issue and write the editorial.” He said that before setting his editorials in type, he read them over the phone each week to his contact at the company, Tom Wilck, then the Irvine Co.’s vice president for communications who now runs his own public relations firm.

Regarding news coverage, Shuman said, “in all honesty, there was never an overt effort to slant or manipulate the news.” Barbara Fryer, an experienced reporter and former journalism professor at Cal State Long Beach, agrees. Fryer said she accepted a job as reporter for the Irvine World News a year ago with some concern about the company’s influence over news coverage.

“That was one of the first questions I asked,” she said. “I didn’t want to work for a house organ.”

Since she has come to work for the weekly, Fryer said, she has never felt intimidated or felt the need to “fashion my stories.”

Readers and public officials alike give the Irvine World News generally high marks for credibility as a community paper.

“They have bent over backwards to take care of opposing viewpoints, sometimes to the detriment of those who support their programs,” said C. David Baker, an Irvine City Council member and candidate for Congress.

Baker, who has been supportive of Irvine Co. policies over the years and who has the backing of the Irvine Co. in his bid for the Republican nomination in the 40th District, acknowledges that the paper “has been good to me” as a member of the council’s pro-growth faction. For example, the paper supported his efforts in the 1980s to locate a community hospital in Irvine--one of the most divisive issues in the city’s history--on a site owned by the Irvine Co. Another faction wanted the hospital on the UC Irvine campus.

“The reporters are as fair as they can be,” said Larry Agran, Irvine’s mayor, who is seen by many as an Irvine Co. nemesis and who was referred to as “divisive and an obstructionist” in an Irvine Co. internal memo obtained by The Times. “There are a couple of instances where some issues were just not covered,” Agran said.

But Agran, who recently referred to the paper as “the company mouthpiece,” was more critical of the editorial pages, on which he has been targeted for criticism in the past. “Obviously the company owns the newspaper and is entitled to its editorial opinion,” he said. “The problem is that they seek to pass their opinion off as something other than what it is, namely Irvine Co. propaganda. The editorial page should read on its masthead, ‘An Editorial Message From Irvine Co. Headquarters.’ It is important for people to understand that it is owned and operated by the Irvine Co.”

Each week at the bottom of the editorial page, a line of small type states that “The Irvine World News was founded by the Irvine Co. in 1970.” From time to time over the years, the paper runs letters to the editor and guest columns denouncing it as a wholly owned tool of the Irvine Co., including a recent letter written by Agran.

“We don’t go out of our way to make a big deal of it,” said Brien Manning, who has been publisher since 1982. “But there is no mystery. We don’t hide it.” The paper’s relationship with the company has continued to evolve during Manning’s tenure as publisher. Since 1982, he has reported to Wilck, to a vice president for finance, then-company President Thomas Neilsen and, most recently, to Larry Thomas, Wilck’s successor as vice president for corporate communications.

Manning said his relationship with the company is largely “informal” since “on critical issues I’m quite sensitive to their positions editorially. . . . In the six years I have been here, I have never for a moment had any reason to feel they are attempting to manipulate or direct the content of this publication.”

Thomas said he spends an average of two hours a week on the Irvine World News, mostly talking on the phone to Manning about the paper’s operations. Both Manning and Thomas, who once was a reporter for the San Diego Union, said they receive calls from other company officials and members of the community asking why the paper is not more forthright in its support of various issues.

That point has been debated since the Irvine World News began. Wilck recalled that there “used to be serious internal arguments” over the best way to utilize the paper.

“There were two schools of thought,” Wilck recalled. “My school of thought was that it should be approached like any other newspaper. . . . Some of us felt very strongly that the minute the newspaper lost its credibility it had no value to the community or the company. We really fought to protect that.”

When there was pressure to be more direct in using the paper, Wilck said, “I always used to say, you know, if you want to blow it, OK, make sure you got a big enough issue so if you are going to destroy the Irvine World News it’s worth it.”

Irvine World News Editor Jeanne Keevil would agree with Wilck’s warning.

“I am a journalist,” she said. “I am not a company advocate.” Over the years, she added, “we have attempted to be very balanced,” and consequently, “we’ve established our autonomy. We are not an Irvine Co. house organ.”

As a result, she said, “our credibility is as high as we could hope for.”