A Fine Mess Among Press : Conflict: Ouster of ‘non-journalists’ from Greater Los Angeles Press Club leadership spawns a rival faction. Neither side is yielding.

Call it bad news for the public relations people. And bad PR for the news people.

The squabble over who should be considered the “press” at the Greater Los Angeles Press Club has left its 420 members with two presidents, two “official” newsletters, rival boards of directors and enough name-calling to set everyone’s head spinning.

It all began with an attempt to remove public relations professionals from leadership positions in the 48-year-old club. That led to a legal fight over the group’s $450,000 bank account and even a tug-of-war over the keys to its Hollywood headquarters.

“I’m embarrassed. It’s going to take a lot of work to get our credibility back,” admitted Press Club President Dusty Brandel.

“I think this has gone too far. We need somebody to come along and say, ‘You kids stop fighting with one another,’ ” acknowledged Press Club President Ross Olney.

Brandel, of the Glendale News-Press, is the club president who in July fired a dozen “non-journalists” from the group’s 24-member board of directors.

Olney, an author who lives in Ventura, is the club president elected in August by dissident board members, including many of those run off by Brandel.

Olney’s group then changed the locks to the Press Club office at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, seized the club’s checkbook and tried to change account signature cards at banks where the club keeps its $450,000--earmarked for the purchase of new club headquarters.

Brandel’s group responded by filing a theft report with police, talking hotel officials into letting them back in the office and obtaining a temporary restraining order to keep the dissidents from withdrawing the money--proceeds from the $1.3-million sale of the club’s former headquarters, on Vermont Avenue near the Hollywood Freeway, six years ago.

The original Los Angeles Press Club was a rented house on South Westlake Avenue that poker-playing newspapermen used as their private speak-easy in 1928. It was the Prohibition era, but club members hired nearby USC medical students to brew beer in the cellar. The club folded after three years, following several raids by Prohibition agents.

The current club was formed in 1946 by eight reporters from The Times, the Examiner, the Herald Express and the old Daily News, who gathered at a hotel across from Hearst’s Herald building.

These days, the club sponsors monthly luncheon discussions and evening “mixers” and conducts an annual journalism awards contest for Los Angeles-area newspapers and television and radio stations.

The current dispute became public when both sides distributed competing editions of the club’s September “8 Ball Monthly” newsletter..

Brandel’s newsletter accuses the dissidents of conducting illegal Press Club meetings and announces plans to tighten up membership requirements.

“Not that we have anything against public relations, an honorable profession,” wrote that newsletter’s editor, retired television newsman Maury Green of Sherman Oaks.

Olney’s newsletter, on the other hand, accuses the incumbents of illegally removing board members and pledges to avoid future disputes through careful adherence to club bylaws.

“Certainly the world has changed since 1946 and so has the club,” wrote that newsletter’s editor, free-lance writer Patricia Kirk of Malibu. “It’s obvious the club was intended to serve working journalists. But did the founders intend to downgrade or exclude journalists if they made career changes?”

Both sides acknowledge that the club’s interpretation of “journalist” is the key to the dispute. In the past, the club generally defined three classes of membership: “active” (working news media); “associate” (people employed in such areas as public relations or advertising); and “honorary” (celebrities and politicians).

Only “active” members had club voting rights. But former reporters and editors who became publicists and media consultants have been allowed to keep their “active” status. And several years ago the club relaxed its rules to give voting rights to those in “communications” fields such as advertising.

Although no one can say for certain what percentage of current club members are employed in news-gathering, critics contend that there has been a takeover by public relations members.

Brandel said she decided to yank those who did not “have active affiliation with the news media” off the board on the advice of several lawyers and parliamentarians. The board’s 24-member size made it unwieldy, she said.

“We weren’t accomplishing anything at meetings.” said Brandel, 59, a newspaper advertising saleswoman who also writes on motor sports. “Everywhere I went I heard, ‘It’s not a Press Club, it’s a PR club.’ ”

The suddenness of the purge outraged some.

Olney, 65, the author of 172 books--mostly nonfiction children’s volumes--said he would have preferred that the board be reduced “by attrition or election.” Though he agrees the club should be “more journalistically oriented,” he adds: “Of course, public relations people, in my opinion, are now more journalistically oriented.”

KCAL-TV anchorman Jerry Dunphy supports Brandel. “I think when it becomes top-heavy with PR people, the edge is taken off the meaning of a press club,” he said.

Olney’s backers include ousted club director Richard Tyler, a former newspaper writer who now is vice president of marketing for the Burbank-based Triple Check financial services company.

“PR people such as myself don’t want to dominate the Press Club,” Tyler said. “If they dominate it, what good is being in it?”

Ali Sar, executive editor for administration of the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Whittier Daily News, said he suggested that all Press Club officers resign and a caretaker group run the club until new elections are held. Olney’s side agreed, but Brandel’s didn’t.

Brandel’s restraining order prohibits the dissidents from using the Press Club name, entering its headquarters or attending its meetings. Her supporters will seek a permanent injunction Oct. 11.

Olney’s side goes to court today to seek an order to keep Brandel from holding the club’s annual general membership meeting on Wednesday, the night members are scheduled to nominate a new board for 1995.