Angry Newhalls Launch Own Paper

A newspaper war is brewing in the Santa Clarita Valley and a legendary California editor and his wife, both in their 70s, are preparing to fire the first shot.

Scott and Ruth Newhall, descendants of pioneer valley settlers, confirmed Monday that they plan to launch a weekly newspaper to compete with the Newhall Signal, the paper they edited for 25 years until their surprise resignations last week. The family quit after a long-festering conflict over finances and stock ownership with the paper’s owner, the Morris Newspaper Corp. of Savannah, Ga.

“At my age, I must be crazy,” said Ruth Newhall, 78, of starting the yet-unnamed weekly.

As she did at the Signal, Ruth Newhall will edit the weekly. Her husband, family patriarch Scott Newhall, 74, will serve as publisher and editorial writer. Their son, Tony Newhall, 47, who was publisher of the Signal, plans to go into the computer business and will not join his parents at the new paper.

Their announcement means that Scott Newhall, a legendary figure in California journalism, will continue with the distinctive, fulminating brand of newspapering he practiced for 20 years at the San Francisco Chronicle before he became publisher in Newhall.

Newhall, for instance, has written front-page editorials calling the Legislature “a whining, lying, groveling gang of sneak thieves,” and characterizing the San Fernando Valley as “a heaven on Earth for winos, dog poisoners, child abusers, husband swappers, wife beaters, porno stars, bill jumpers, street racers, defrocked priests and street-corner bordellos.”

The paper’s banner headlines were no less provocative: “Sugar and Spice and a Knee in the Groin,” said one. “Big Rigs Won’t Stop/Throw the Bastards in Jail,” said another.

During the turbulent 1960s, the Signal was the only newspaper in California to run a UPI wire photograph of then-Gov. Ronald Reagan discreetly making an obscene gesture as protesting students at UC Berkeley booed and hissed at him.

“The Signal has not been bashful,” Ruth Newhall said.

Word of the Newhalls’ intention to start a competing newspaper in Santa Clarita, a fast-growing city north of the San Fernando Valley, was no surprise to Morris Newspaper Corp. officials.

“We thought they probably would,” said Darell Phillips, a Morris employee who will supervise the management changeover at the Signal, which expanded in June from three days a week to five. “They had mentioned that possibility.

“The Newhall Signal does a good job,” said Phillips, publisher of the Manteca Bulletin, a Morris newspaper in Northern California. “Basically, with competition from the Newhalls or without, we’ll just do the best job possible in the area.”

Ruth Newhall said she and her husband have already rented office space, have begun interviewing prospective reporters and circulation and advertising personnel and hope to have their first edition published in three or four weeks.

Scott Newhall is the great-grandson of Henry Mayo Newhall, a pioneer land baron who put together the 37,000-acre Newhall Ranch on which the planned community of Valencia is being developed. Independently wealthy, Newhall served for two decades as editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, where he became famous for his colorful and uninhibited practices.

Ruth Newhall also is a pioneer journalist. More than 50 years ago she was a police reporter for the Chronicle--a rare beat for female reporters of the day.

The Newhalls’ return to journalism does not surprise loyal readers. After all, this family, 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.

Bought Signal in 1963

What did surprise Santa Clarita residents was the Newhalls’ resignation from the Signal, which they purchased in 1963.

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?”

But for all its fans, the Signal under the Newhalls had plenty of detractors.

Valencia resident Barbara Okronick said that she, like many readers, enjoyed the paper and editorials but found some coverage overly dramatic. “We say, ‘Read the Signal, and then discard about 50% of what it says as far as being factual,’ ” Okronick said.

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. The Morris chain operates 39 newspapers nationwide, the largest of which is the Signal, with a circulation of 40,000.

Phillips said there are no plans to reduce the staff or change the 77-year-old paper’s editorial posture, as some have feared. Editorial control of the paper will be local, not dictated from Savannah, he promised.

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

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

But some change is inevitable.

“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.