Even Enemies Mourn Exit of the Newhalls From Namesake Paper

Word traveled quickly when the influential Newhall family announced last week it had quit the Newhall Signal, the scrappy newspaper that has recorded life in the Santa Clarita Valley under the family’s reign for 25 years.

Jim Ventress, executive director of the local Boys and Girls Club, recalls his telephone jangling the morning the news hit. “I got five or six phone calls.” Everyone asked: “Did you hear about the Newhalls?”

The fuss is understandable. With the Newhalls at the helm, the paper had become the local voice of the valley as it grew from a suburban outpost to a growing, bustling extension of Los Angeles.

Consider: Santa Clarita might not have become a full-fledged city in 1987 had the Signal not blazed the trail with persuasive editorials, cityhood proponents say.

Consider: A plan to put a hazardous-waste facility near the valley’s drinking water wells might have gone through in 1970 if the feisty paper had not rallied opposition.

Consider: Everybody who is anybody in the Santa Clarita Valley has had a coming out in the paper’s longstanding gossip column. As one devoted reader says, “You really hadn’t arrived until you got your name in Mimi’s column.”

But all that is gone. Last Tuesday, chief editorial writer Scott Newhall, 74, his wife, Ruth, 78, the paper’s editor and anonymous author of Mimi’s column, and their son Tony, 47, the publisher, abruptly quit the Signal. The resignations came after a long-festering conflict over finances and stock ownership with the paper’s absentee owner, Morris Newspaper Corp. of Savannah, Ga.

The changeover shocked a community where, one recent survey showed, 88% of the residents polled read the Signal, even though some said they took its information with a grain of salt. With outsiders overseeing the newspaper’s transition, many are concerned that the Signal will no longer be able to cover local issues knowledgeably. Others are certain the Signal will lose the edge that in the past has galvanized the valley’s residents.

Questions About Future

Few know what to expect from the Signal’s new management, but former editors and executives of Morris Newspaper Corp. said the company’s papers elsewhere lack the brand of chutzpah that has been the hallmark of the Signal. Like many small newspapers trying to avoid alienating advertisers, they sometimes play it safe.

Moreover, the former employees said, Morris Newspaper Corp. brings to an institution known for its consistency a history of frequent staff turnover, both in its executive and reporter ranks. For the first time in a quarter of a century, the local paper will not be run by locals.

“It’s another reminder that we’re not a small community anymore,” said Barbara Okronick, a Valencia resident.

“I am scared to death that the editorial side of that paper will become secondary to the advertising side,” said Daniel Hon, an attorney and longtime friend of Scott Newhall. “It will become a great loss to the community if that is allowed to happen.”

Nationwide Chain

The Morris chain operates 39 newspapers nationwide, the largest of which is the Signal, with a circulation of 40,000. In California, the chain also runs the Ceres Courier, Willows Journal and Manteca Bulletin.

A former executive who worked for the company for nine years, Bill Camp, said the newspapers are not flashy and suffer from high turnover that he attributes to low wages.

“It’s a chain that has a tendency to go through their people rather quickly,” agreed James G. Marshall, city manager of Ceres, a town of 18,000 near Modesto. Marshall said the Ceres Courier, one of two Morris papers he is familiar with, covers local issues well but does not stir much debate.

Of the Willows Journal, 26-year-old editor Joe Hudon said, ‘We’re nothing real special.” The Journal circulates 3,000 newspapers weekly in Willows, a Northern California town of 4,900 residents. A three-member staff puts out the paper, Hudon said.

No Surprise

Darell Phillips, publisher of the chain’s three Northern California papers, is not surprised by such assessments. “You’ve got to remember this is a chain of small newspapers,” he said. “The papers act as training grounds for young reporters, and low salaries for rookie reporters are to be expected.”

Phillips, who will assume duties as interim publisher of the Signal on Tuesday, said there are no plans to reduce the staff or change the 77-year-old paper’s editorial posture, as some have feared.

If that’s the case, reporter Sharon Hormel predicted, the Signal will remain much as before. “Things will stay the same. The Newhalls have hired a staff of reporters who think as they do.”

But readers agree there is no way to duplicate the highly personal voice of the Newhalls, who edited their paper in a manner befitting the highly opinionated and rabble-rousing publications of the 19th Century.

Fulminating Editorials

Gone, it seems, are fulminating editorials under banner headlines such as “Sugar and Spice and a Knee in the Groin” or “Big Rigs Won’t Stop/Throw the Bastards in Jail.”

Family patriarch Scott Newhall, who formerly was editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, had become a legendary curmudgeon in California journalism with those outspoken front-page editorials. He once called the state Legislature “a whining, lying, groveling gang of sneak thieves.”

“I would imagine the paper would continue but be a little more conservative,” said Santa Clarita City Councilwoman Jo Anne Darcy, whom the Signal once called “the handmaiden to the Ayatollah.” It was the paper’s way of saying she serves as an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

“I think the paper will lose a certain spirit that pervaded the whole group out there that was engendered strictly by the Newhalls,” said Jim Foy, executive director of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club. In March, the club honored the Signal for best overall news coverage by a weekly or semiweekly newspaper.

Friend Worries

Connie Worden, a longtime friend of the Newhalls and a Santa Clarita planning commissioner, said she worries about the future of the Signal.

“I think one of the strengths of this valley has been the Signal,” she said. “Because of its colorful nature, everyone reads it. Scott has had the most provocative editorials. As maddening as some of his editorials have been, they are always thought provoking. They’ve punctured a few of our balloons, but it was good for us.”

Joseph R. Schillaci, who as president of Magic Mountain has come under occasional attack of the editorials, called the Newhalls “an integral part of the valley’s personality. Some people will miss them, and everybody will remember them.”

But for all its fans, the paper has plenty of detractors.

“There are probably a lot of people who are glad (Scott) Newhall walked,” said Camp, the former Morris executive and now general manager of Live Oak Publishing Co. in Northern California.

Overly Dramatic

Okronick said she, like many readers, enjoyed the paper and editorials but found some coverage overly dramatic.

“We enjoy the Signal,” Okronick said. “We say, ‘Read the Signal, and then discard about 50% of what it says as far as being factual.’ ”

Her remarks echo findings of a recent public opinion poll of valley residents that was commissioned by the Santa Clarita City Council.

The poll of 400 households, conducted randomly by telephone, found the Signal was the valley’s most widely read newspaper. About 88% of the respondents said they read the paper often or sometimes.

But the Signal also has received the lowest marks for quality. Almost 50% of those polled said the paper was poor or fair, and 11% gave it an excellent rating. The poll, released last month, had quizzed Santa Clarita Valley residents on subjects ranging from newspaper readership to traffic to the City Council’s performance. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Used to Criticism

Scott Newhall was used to such criticism. He once said the Signal helped unite the Santa Clarita Valley’s diverse communities by being the kind of paper everyone hated.

Despite its enemies, the newspaper always has been able to rouse the community into action and sometimes change the course of events.

Worden recalls that in 1975 a group of residents began mustering support for cityhood. Ruth Newhall convinced them that instead of forming a new city, the Santa Clarita Valley should break off and form a new county.

The drive to create Canyon County made it to the ballot twice, but was rejected both times by voters in other parts of Los Angeles County. Eventually, the paper backed cityhood, and Santa Clarita became a separate city in 1987. Now, many credit the Newhalls for throwing their support behind the idea.

“Our valley will be much poorer without them. They have been strong contributors to this valley,” Worden said.

New Editor

Against that backdrop, interim publisher Phillips said his first concern is to find a new editor. Editorial control of the paper will be local, not dictated from corporate headquarters in Savannah, he promised.

“The only thing I’m not allowed to do is change the masthead and raise the price,” he said.

As for the Newhalls, local leaders and readers are sure they have not seen the last of the family, especially Scott. After all, this is the man who, when threatened with a libel suit for describing the local trucking industry as the “Southern California Panzer Division of Murder Incorporated,” brazenly reprinted the editorial in full.

“In the back of my mind, I just can’t see them stopping,” Darcy said. “If they don’t come back quickly, it’ll be the biggest loss this community has known.”

No Definite Plans

Scott Newhall, great-grandson of pioneer land baron Henry Mayo Newhall, said that after spending about 50 years in journalism, he plans to stay in the business but has no definite plans. When asked whether he had considered starting another newspaper, he said, “Now that’s an idea.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Scott doesn’t decide to start a newspaper,” said state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia) whose wife’s family initially sold the paper to the Newhalls in 1963. “They’d better worry about Scott coming in and competing with them.”

When Newhall sold the Signal to Morris in 1978, Davis said, there “was a clause in his contract that he could not start another paper for a certain number of years . . . that clause ran out three years ago.”