Rocked but Still Printing : Media: Fillmore’s historic Herald and newcomer Gazette compete from staffers’ homes after quake wrecks offices.

It was the biggest story ever to hit Fillmore. But the earthquake Jan. 17 almost wiped out the two locally owned weekly newspapers struggling to make it in this town of about 13,000.

The 87-year-old Fillmore Herald and its 5-year-old upstart competitor, the Fillmore Gazette, were forced into the homes of staff members because of the quake.

“We’ve both been knocked out of our offices, but we’re still publishing,” said Martin Farrell, the 55-year-old publisher of the Gazette.

With its building condemned, the paper’s staff of five has just finished its second post-quake edition from the crowded garage of its photographer, John Stewart.

“It’s tougher than you think in a small town,” said Farrell after an exhausting 24-hour writing and paste-up session. “We compete for everything here.”

The competition to meet deadlines and scoop the Gazette has sent Fillmore Herald publisher and editor Doug Huff, 48, into his own round-the-clock schedule. Huff also was sure he would keep churning out the news, despite the disaster.

“The Herald has survived for 87 years,” Huff said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Holding up to stress from both the quake and the competition, neither publisher seems to be anywhere near stopping the presses. Even with their offices in ruins, the only thing on their minds was getting out the news.

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The Gazette was located on the ground floor of the Masonic Building, which was damaged so severely that it probably will be demolished. In the few hours after the quake, Farrell and Stewart were able to pull computers out of the damaged office, along with enough equipment to set up shop in Stewart’s home.

The damage at the Herald was much less extensive, but it forced the staff out of its office and into Huff’s home a few blocks away.

Using a board propped on four milk crates to hold three computers, and a sliding glass door from his patio to paste up pages, the Herald is managing just fine, Huff said.

But both papers, which come out each Thursday, were hard-pressed to meet their Wednesday night deadline after Monday’s earthquake.

“Of course we couldn’t do anything on Monday because we had no power,” Huff said. “And on Tuesday we had to move everything from the office to my home, so we didn’t get started on the paper until Tuesday night. We had to work the next 26 hours to meet that Wednesday deadline.”

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The day the newspapers came out they were passed around at the City Council meeting as residents studied pictures looking for their own faces or those of acquaintances.

Both papers sold record numbers. Farrell said the Gazette sold about 4,000 papers, while Huff said he sold about 6,000. Each paper normally has a press run of about 3,500.

“I think we have about 50 left,” Huff said of his earthquake issue.

News-hungry Fillmore residents, amazed that the two papers have survived the last five years of heated competition, are impressed that the papers are publishing after the quake.

“I don’t know how they’ve done it,” said Jesse Segovia, owner of Segovia’s Fillmore Market. “Really, there’s not enough advertising for both of them, yet they continue to publish . . . and now it’s going to be doubly hard with everyone knocked out of business by the quake.”

While Farrell grew up on a ranch in Camarillo, he got most of his newspaper experience from running small-town papers in Idaho and Washington. He decided to come back to Ventura County a little over five years ago.

“I picked Fillmore because it’s changed so little since the 1950s,” he said. “It’s a beautiful place, and I decided I wanted to work here.”

Farrell tried to buy the Herald in 1988, an act Huff still hasn’t forgiven him for.

“The man had no business coming here,” said Huff, who grew up in Orange County and managed newspapers in the Chowchilla Valley before coming to Ventura County in 1981. He bought the Herald in 1987.

“I have only kicked someone out of my office twice, and both times it was Farrell. The proposition he made and the way he made it was so outrageous, you wouldn’t believe it.”

Farrell shrugs this criticism off, saying he is just interested in putting out his paper.

While the Herald has been around since 1907, it stopped printing the city’s legal notices two years ago because “we’re not City Hall’s puppy dog,” Huff said.

“Some people won’t even look at the Herald anymore,” said Ken Glenn, the president of the Fillmore Masonic Temple Assn., which owns the building where the Gazette was located. “I think they’ve rubbed people the wrong way.”

Stephen McKinnon, who manages Fillmore Realty, said he likes the Gazette because it has a better layout and a little more class.

“The Gazette leans more toward niceness, while the Herald plays up their front page to sell newspapers,” he said. “But I like the fact that we have two newspapers here. I love the competition, because I get a better price for my ads.”

Others have said they are sticking with the Herald because it’s the town’s original newspaper. Both papers are fighting for every reader they can get.

“We try to do the best we can do, but I don’t suspect we’ll both be here for the next five years,” said Farrell. “The people of Fillmore will probably decide which paper survives.”