After 75 Years, Catalina Islander Presses On With Its Local Coverage

It was an unlikely delivery room for the birth of a newspaper--an abandoned creamery on Santa Catalina Island, crammed with marble-topped milk stands and cheese-making machinery.

The year was 1914, and the first four-page issue of the Catalina Islander rolled off a press that was driven by steam piped from a boiler at the old Hotel Metropole across the street.

An occasional malfunction would fill the newsroom with a thick fog, but such setbacks were to be expected in early Avalon, where electricity was available only from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. daily, and all day on Tuesday, which was ironing day.

In its 75th year of operation, the weekly newspaper has evolved from a two-page roundup of local news for the 900 year-round residents who then lived on the island, to a folksy, newsy 20-page paper read by the island’s 2,500 current residents--and tourists from all over.

The first issue of the paper reported that the Hotel Metropole had opened for the season and that a controversy was in full bloom over plans to establish a library in Avalon.

Recent Islander issues report on such up-to-the-minute dilemmas as graffiti, zoning, drug busts and vehicle control.

But, in Avalon, some things don’t change: Both 1914 and 1989 issues include breezy accounts of islanders’ comings and goings, parties and community events.

“It’s still a small-town paper, but people from all over the country read it,” said owner and publisher Donald Root Haney. “People who would like to move over here, people who’ve lived here, people who visit here.”

Now far advanced beyond the days of steam-driven presses, the Islander has increased its price from two cents to 50 cents a copy, and the paper is printed on a state-of-the-art press in Glendale. From there, it is delivered by mail to subscribers or transported by truck and helicopter to the island.

Although the island’s population is about 2,500, the Islander’s circulation is more than twice that. About half of the 6,000 issues printed each week are delivered to subscribers, on the island and on the mainland, while the remainder are sold at Avalon newsstands and shops or are distributed free to tourists who come to the island on cruise ships and cross-channel boats.

“You have a lot of people looking at the island through the paper, from the outside,” said Haney, 57.

But the Islander is scrutinized by plenty of insiders too, who wait for their Friday morning copies “to see if we got it right,” Haney said.

Said Lolo Saldana, a former councilman and owner of Lolo’s Plaza Barber Shop: “Everybody looks for that paper Friday mornings. They’re waiting for it, especially the older people. They read it from the opening to the last page.”

For the Avalon business community, the Islander is the primary advertising forum, said George Escofie, past president of the Catalina Chamber of Commerce. The paper “has a tremendous off-island subscription base and, knowing that, merchants are eager to advertise in it,” Escofie said. “All of us depend on it.”

The Islander was founded by Judge Ernest Windle, who was given the use of the old creamery building and a printing press and type by the Banning brothers, who formed the Santa Catalina Island Co. when they bought the island in 1892.

Windle operated the Islander until 1948, when he leased it to an employee. In 1952, he sold the paper to Phillip K. Wrigley, whose family had bought the island and the Santa Catalina Island Co. from the Banning brothers. The company, through a nonprofit conservancy, now owns about 86% of the island.

In 1955, Wrigley leased the paper to Gene and Margaret Haney, who moved to the island after starting the Valley Pioneer in Danville, Calif. A year later, their son Donald joined them in putting out the paper, and in 1973, he bought out the island company’s interest with the help of a $25,000 loan from Wrigley.

Haney owns and publishes the paper, and his wife, Ann, serves as editor.

In its debut issue, the paper printed a greeting to readers, proclaiming the Islander a watchdog “open at all times to the consideration of progressive ideas” and adding that the paper would “give the long-suffering feelings of many of our embryo politicians an opportunity to be expressed. If at any time your views are misrepresented, your tender feet hurt, don’t try to beat our editorial staff to a physical disfigurement--just tell us.”

That first issue, on Jan. 27, 1914, discussed what incorporation would mean for the new city, both good--”It should teach men the power of local government”--and bad--”We have opened the way for a number of political parasites to hatch and try out new schemes.”

On a further ominous note, the paper warned: “Be it always remembered, good stuff lies in little room--and so does poison.”

Windle’s son, John W. R. Windle, was then a 10-year-old whose task was to help his father put out paper after school.

“I started right off the bat, in 1913 and 1914,” Windle said. “I helped my father set type and fold(ed) newspapers and that kind of stuff.”

Windle, 86, recalls that the paper was born out of a dispute between the editor of the island’s first local paper, the Catalina Wireless, and the Banning brothers, then owners of the island. The Banning family, Windle said, was displeased with the coverage provided by Wireless editor William LeFavor.

So, John Windle said, they called on the Oxford-educated Windle, known on the island for his fondness for literature and eventually for publishing a history of the island. Windle later became judge of the Catalina Justice Court.

His task at the Islander, however, was less genteel. “He was hired to fire bullets back at the Wireless for the island company,” his son recalled.

The Wireless--originally founded as a summer paper--has long since folded.

The Islander also offered feisty political coverage, the intensity of which waxed and waned over the years, Haney said.

Now, Haney said, “we cover small-town politics, but it’s my philosophy that issues, not egos, are the things we should be interested in.”

Councilman Hal Host said islanders read the paper for local color, not personal politics. “We all read it,” Host said. “Mr. Haney has always tried to stay of out politics. He reports on the doings of the council and the commissions, but he’s always been very careful not to take sides.”

In most ways, the remainder of the Islander’s news coverage has remained close to its small-town roots, recording the island’s history through chatty news about births and birthdays, deaths, marriages, who went where on vacation and who got a hole-in-one at the local golf course.

One popular feature is “Only in Avalon,” humorous snippets of information scattered throughout the paper, mostly concerning tourists’ misperceptions about the island as overheard by locals, for instance: “What time does the 4 o’clock boat leave?”

Though such features remain standard in the paper, in other areas there are glimmers of change.

Within the last year, the paper has increased its coverage of crime news, including publishing a crime blotter of burglaries, arrests for drunkenness and the occasional drug bust, Haney said.

The Islander “is both a promotional piece and a community newspaper,” Haney said. “Sometimes it’s a little difficult to achieve a balance. . . . I find mixing the bad things with the good things sometimes difficult over here. I am aware of what a large segment of outsiders view the island through the Islander.”

A murder in Avalon earlier this year, for example, resulted in “the first murder trial in island history involving a local resident,” the paper reported, sending “shock waves through Avalon’s normally quiet and tranquil community.”

The murder also received widespread coverage on the mainland.

“It was very difficult for us to cover,” Haney said. “Things like that just don’t happen in our little paradise. We hated to run it on the front page. It reflected that, yes, we do have violence in Avalon. In the old days we didn’t have it, or we just ignored it.”

Because the Islander staff was smaller years ago, Haney said, “I could not cover the police blotter consistently and fairly, so I declined to do it.” Now, he says, the paper is making a deliberate effort to broaden its news coverage.

The front page of the Islander’s April 28 issue, for example, reflected a particularly busy week, including stories on the murder at Pebbly Beach, a plane crash, a missing diver and a boat sinking.

The following week, in a column headlined “Avalon Isn’t Sodom and Gomorrah,” Islander reporter Chris Abel sought to explain the increased crime coverage to Islander readers.

“The sudden presence of tragedy on our front page reflects our efforts (to expand coverage) and does not necessarily mean Avalon is suffering from a ‘crime wave,’ ” Abel wrote.

In an interview, Abel, a six-year island resident who has worked at the paper for a year, said he was proud of efforts to beef up hard news coverage, despite some initial complaints from Avalon residents.

“As much of a utopia as it is,” Abel said, “it still has problems as much as any little town, and people need to be aware that these things do go on here.”

The isolation of the island community fosters a sense of closeness: Everybody knows everybody else--and Islander employees find themselves writing about people they know.

Abel said the paper often does not print names or addresses of crimes involving residents. “There’s a lot of protectiveness of your friends. . . . To my point of view, it doesn’t make sense to publicize individual names unless they’re convicted. You almost treat everybody in town like a minor.”

Said Ann Haney: “In a larger place, you write about something and you don’t encounter people you write about immediately and constantly. You have to be very sensitive to feelings people have about certain things.”

Donald Haney said he no longer endorses candidates for local office because his last effort--about 25 years ago--created some hard feelings.

Once an active reporter for the paper, Haney keeps a lower profile now with his byline appearing only occasionally on an article or column.

Each of the Islander employees performs a variety of functions at the paper, sharing duties from photography to selling ads and laying out the paper.

“It’s awfully boring to do the same thing all the time,” Haney said. “That’s one good thing about a small weekly.”

Some of the paper’s employees also continue to work at other jobs.

Haney, who was a salesman for a pump company before working at the paper, operates a small printing company in addition to the Islander. Ann, previously an administrator at Avalon Municipal Hospital for 16 years, now does most of the editing.

Abel, 41, ran an upholstery business on the island and had never worked as a reporter before Haney offered him a job. “I absolutely love it,” he said.

The Islander’s part-time correspondent at isolated Two Harbors, 25 miles from Avalon, is Doug Oudin, the harbor master there.

“I find it kind of challenging and fun,” said Oudin, who has been writing weekly dispatches about Two Harbors’ 100 year-round residents for about a year. “This end of the island has always been ignored.”

In general, the Islander maintains a sense of humor. One recent article, headlined “Tootsie Has Been Found!” recounted how a dog that many islanders helped look for was found, thin but uninjured, after being stuck under a house for three weeks. In a 1986 City Council race, candidate W. F. (Oley) Olsen ran an ad that said simply: “Vote for Holly’s Dad.” Presumably, everyone knew who Holly’s father was.

Those personal touches make the Islander unique, Haney said, and the fact that it is among a dwindling number of independent weeklies that have not been purchased by a newspaper chain makes it an endangered species.

“Small-town newspapers are disappearing; small businesses all over the country are disappearing,” he said. The Islander too has had buyout offers, but Haney said he plans to stick around for a while.

“I’ve been amazed to visit other small towns, look on the masthead of the local paper, and find some firm in New York owns it,” Haney said. “That’s not going to happen here.”