Ojai Valley News Publisher Resigns for Job in the East

Ojai Valley News Publisher Darrow (Duke) Tully is leaving the paper to become president of a daily newspaper group in the Boston area in January.

The former publisher of Arizona’s two largest daily newspapers gained notoriety in 1985 when he resigned after a county attorney revealed that Tully had fabricated a 30-year career as a decorated Air Force combat pilot.

Tully apologized to the Pentagon for masquerading as a war hero.

He spent the next five years with Wick Communications Inc., a family-owned, nationwide group of 30 small newspapers that bought the Ojai Valley News in 1987.

Tully, 58, announced that he is departing Jan. 11 from his two-year post as editor and publisher of the thrice-weekly Ojai paper, with a circulation of 6,250, to become president and publisher of Beacon Communications in Acton, Mass.

Beacon, a subsidiary of the Chronicle Publishing Co. in San Francisco, publishes 16 daily and weekly newspapers and several other publications with a total circulation of about 150,000, he said.

The move is a return to Chronicle Publishing for him, Tully said. He served from 1973 to 1975 as president of the San Francisco Newspaper Agency jointly operating the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle newspapers.

Tully was publisher of the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette for seven years before he resigned in 1985 to became editor and publisher of a small Wick newspaper in Williston, N.D. He later took over Wick’s western division and moved to Ojai to manage several Ojai Valley News publications and its commercial printing operation.

Robert Wick, company secretary-treasurer, said, “He’s done an excellent job for us. We hate to lose him, but we understand the possibilities of this position for him.”

Tully increased the Ojai newspaper’s frequency from twice to three times a week and boosted its circulation by 20%, Wick said. “He produced a high-quality newspaper in Ojai that we’re very proud of,” he said.

Wick said his company is considering several candidates for Tully’s position and has not yet selected a new publisher.

“I have enjoyed Ojai,” Tully said. “It certainly has been full of challenges for me as a publisher.”

Last year, Tully sought a court order to force the Ventura County Star-Free Press to raise its advertising rates for its weekly Ojai Valley edition after several advertisers left the Ojai paper. The suit was dropped, however, after the Ventura newspaper slashed its Ojai circulation claims by nearly 4,000 copies.

In March, Tully was on trial for three days in Ventura County Municipal Court. A jury convicted him of one misdemeanor count of animal cruelty for shooting his neighbor’s small dog between the eyes with a pellet gun.

Judge Bruce A. Clark placed him on six months probation, ordered him to pay $240 for the dog’s surgery and took away Tully’s weapon, urging him to call Animal Regulation to report problems with dogs straying into his yard. Tully, who said he had tried to get response from the county’s animal control officers, testified he had actually aimed at a larger dog that had threatened him and his wife, Vicki.