Paper’s Political Policy Inflates the Cost of Free Speech

The latest controversy to rage through Coronado--where the height of hedges has been known to dominate public debate--is whether the pine trees on picturesque Orange Avenue should be wrapped in white lights or colored lights at Christmas.

The white lights won, but only after a vote of the City Council--buttressed with the results of a citizens’ survey--and front-page coverage of the issue by the local paper, the weekly Coronado Journal. “My God, the world’s going to pot and we’re arguing about the lights on the Christmas trees,” said Doris Pray, a well-known community gadfly.

But that’s insular Coronado, the beachside burg where busybodies, sophisticated “concerned citizens” and small town politics join together to create a fertile civic landscape dominated by high-spirited debate.

So much so, in fact, that this political season--and we’re not talking George Bush or Michael Dukakis here--the newspaper has instituted a most unusual policy: It is deciding which letters to the paper are political commentary and charging the letter writers 10 cents a word.

One would think that such a policy, apparently the only one of its kind in Southern California, would stifle comment. On the contrary, it seems more people are writing more letters.

That doesn’t mean that people like it. “I think it stinks,” said John A. McQuilkin, whose recent 300-plus word narrative about the state of local affairs, which also plugged two City Council candidates, cost him about $32. He understands how a newspaper can “get deluged by this kind of stuff,” but McQuilkin also can’t help thinking that the dime-a-word policy also translates into more money for the newspaper.

Not enough to make a difference, responds Patricia Walsh, editor of the paper, which has a circulation of about 6,300 in the affluent town of 19,000 people. It was Walsh, along with the former publisher, who instituted the practice about a month or so ago, based, she said, on a similar policy used by a sister publication in the state of Washington. The papers are owned by Worrell Enterprises Inc., which publishes a chain of small papers.

Never a Shortage

Given the level of community interest in local affairs, there has never been a shortage in the Letters to the Editor section of the paper, even now when there is a separate section for the paid letters. “We get swamped with Letters to the Editor,” Walsh said.

“Coronado is a small town and the factions here are widely divided . . . and everyone has their own support group,” she said, sounding like every weary editor who has ever had to contend with complaints lodged by one group angered by the perceived favoritism given by the paper to their opponents. “People come storming into your office screaming about what you gave the other side. . . . It’s difficult to keep this even-score game going.”

So this year, with six people running for two seats on the City Council, two running for mayor, three local ballot propositions and campaigns for the school board, Walsh thought that it was time for a change from tradition.

The paper let its readers know that it was no longer printing political letters on the editorial page. Instead, it was starting something called “Paid Political Commentary,” a separate section in which all political letters, so judged by the newspaper and edited only to prevent possible libel, would be printed at a cost of 10 cents a word, prepaid.

Few Are Complaining

“You can write what you want about who you want and it’s cheap,” said Walsh, who says the average cost of a letter is between $5 and $30, though one letter writer, Carol Cahill, has written a tome that left her with a bill of about $106. So far, few have complained about the new policy, and, in fact, both Walsh and others indicate that the practice seems to have attracted more political letters, not less. A possible explanation, they say, is that it is a cheap form of political advertising.

The only other paper in California known to have a similar section is the Union in Grass Valley-Nevada City in Northern California. Jack Moorhead, publisher and editor of the small daily paper, says his paper instituted its policy several years ago. It then cost 15 cents a word; today, it’s up to 30 cents. The paper runs the letters once a week.

Terry Francke, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., says the practice of charging letter writers “maybe is the wave of the future.”

“God knows, newspapers charge for birth announcements, death notices . . . all kinds of things newspapers used to do gratis,” he said.

A Matter of Tradition

“To succeed at all, it probably does take a community that really views getting a letter in the paper as a significant and interesting achievement,” Francke said. “But I can think of communities where that (charging for political letters) would shut down correspondence rather quickly, where there is not a tradition of letter writing.”

Not so in Coronado, where Pray, the former planning commissioner who has attended City Council meetings regularly for the last 18 years, and her counterparts are seemingly forever poised with their pens at the ready. “There is a strong sense of community here,” Pray said. “In this community we have very strong feelings. Just mention something and we have strong feelings about it.”

Pray, by the way, is a write-in candidate for the City Council. She announced her candidacy last week, in a windy letter that cost her $66.50.