War of Words : Some in Mendocino County Cringe as They Suffer Editor’s Slings and Arrows

Printed prominently on each front page of the Anderson Valley Advertiser is a famous quotation from the legendary newsman Joseph Pulitzer. “Newspapers,” it reads, “should have no friends.” The admonition is clear: Journalists must avoid relationships that might prevent them from reporting news fairly and accurately.

Few have embraced this advice as lustily as Bruce Anderson, the owner-editor-publisher of the Advertiser. After 12 years in the news business, Anderson and his feisty weekly--which serves Boonville and the rest of Mendocino County--are loathed hereabout with a raging hostility that would make many a meeker newsman wilt.

“Mean-spirited trash--that’s all he prints,” said one Boonville retiree, who hastened to add: “But don’t you tell him I said it.”

“He’s nasty, a bully,” declared Robert Glover, a lifelong resident of the region. “Most people only read the paper for defensive reasons--to make sure he hasn’t taken off on you.”

Such sharp-tongued critiques suit Anderson just fine. After all, he says, he did not buy the Advertiser to become a Boonville bigwig or to fulfill some long-suppressed journalistic dream. He bought it to wage war.

“I have always viewed the newspaper as a political weapon,” Anderson, a strapping, garrulous man of 56, said recently. “We take pride in whacking people and don’t mind getting whacked back.”

Despite all the whacking--or perhaps because of it--the Advertiser is widely read in Mendocino County. Even those who insist they would never subscribe can recite recent outrages splashed in its news columns.

“In a sense,” explained a sheriff’s deputy who asked not to be named, “you haven’t arrived until you’ve been sliced and diced in the AVA.”

Issued each Wednesday, the Advertiser is an eclectic melange of political commentary, local gossip, sports briefs, personal musings, rambling letters to the editor and news stories with a definite point of view. The 12-page Jan. 17 issue, for example, featured:

* a recipe for sage corn bread;

* a report on an emotional Community Services District meeting;

* a column on the Nazis and their ironic passion for animal rights;

* an obituary for a nurse who administered the first polio vaccine in the region;

* a memoir of the Summer of Love;

* the weekly lunch menu at the Senior Center.

The staff is lean, consisting of Anderson--who writes two columns and delivers papers each week--and two reporters. Freelancers fill the rest of the news space, while Anderson’s wife, Ling, handles the bookkeeping and pastes up the paper the old-fashioned way.

Occasionally, the Advertiser breaks stories that are picked up by mainstream media. In the late 1980s, the paper caught attention with an inside look at Earth First! protesters fighting to save ancient redwoods. And last year the Advertiser wrote about a timber company’s use of the herbicide Garlon, which was allegedly being applied by workers who were not provided with protective gear.

Humor is a thread that runs throughout the paper--even in the Sheriff’s Log, which included this item on Jan. 3:

12/28 5:04 p.m. “A Ray’s Road man complained that three teenage boys had walked across his property to go fishing. . . . Maybe the guy would rather have them fishing around his house for his valuables. Aren’t young boys supposed to go fishing in the country for god’s sake?”

Most readers can appreciate that sort of mild--and anonymous--ribbing. But many people say Anderson’s personal attacks often go too far.

“Anyone who makes one little mistake around here is bound to get savaged in the Advertiser,” said Mendocino County Supervisor Charles Peterson. “It might be hysterical for readers, but if you’re that person, or that person’s spouse or child, you’re sickened and hurt and you go into your house and don’t come out again.”

If Anderson is merciless in his attacks, he is an equal opportunity assailant. Although his politics are decidedly leftist--he calls himself a libertarian socialist--he skewers radical environmentalists with the same vigor as “redneck ranchers” and timber companies.

“I actually think he’s harder on his own kind--the progressives--because he wants to keep them honest,” said Steve Hall, a Boonville environmentalist. “Sometimes he crosses the line and trashes people, and then you have to wince and look away.”

Not everyone merely looks away. Through the years, Anderson has been the target of about 20 death threats and numerous unsolved acts of vandalism. One prankster left a large pile of manure outside his home, while another ransacked his office, damaging computers and other equipment. A third vandal sabotaged the engines of his pickup and the minivan he used to deliver papers.

Recently, one unhappy target of Anderson’s pen tried something new, slapping him with the first libel lawsuit he has faced. The plaintiff, a local radio talk show host named Anna Taylor, sued Anderson after he used the term “doxie” when referring to her in a column.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “doxie” as “the unmarried mistress of a beggar or a rogue,” or, in slang, a prostitute. Anderson said he had in mind a different, more contemporary meaning, defining doxie as “a flashy woman, not one of loose morals.”

Last month a judge weighed in, ruling against Taylor without explanation. Although pleased, Anderson was a bit surprised. Seven years ago, the same judge threw the publisher in jail for 60 days after he slugged the county superintendent of schools at a public meeting.

“I must say I have new respect for this judge,” the newsman declared.

Although he does not regret using the word “doxie,” Anderson admits that he has, on occasion, been “a little too tough” on certain targets--and has even been moved to print apologies. When asked for an example, however, Anderson couldn’t come up with one. And he concedes that scorn is his typical reaction when someone complains.

“Usually,” he said, “we just reprint the provocation and dare them to sue.”

Such was the case in 1988, when the Advertiser printed a phony interview with the county’s then-congressman, Doug Bosco, under the byline of a reporter for the Des Moines Register. The story quoted Bosco calling environmentalists “malcontents who couldn’t care less about anything other than . . . where their next joint is coming from.”

At first, Anderson insisted that the article was authentic. After a week, however, he admitted it was a hoax. The episode made national news, and many say Anderson’s journalistic credibility suffered a mortal blow. As for Bosco, he demanded a retraction (which Anderson refused to publish) and threatened to sue, but never did.

Despite the experience, Bosco said in an interview that Anderson fills an important “entertainment niche” in Mendocino County: “He’s hateful, and I’ve often gritted my teeth over things he’s said about me. But I don’t deny him the right to say it.”

Anderson purchased the Advertiser for $20,000 in 1984, spurred, he said, by the “hassles” he faced as an operator of a group home for troubled kids. A persistent critic of various county agencies, he believed that the newspaper would give him a “bigger megaphone” that would make him difficult to ignore.

At the time, the paper was a conventional weekly--filled, Anderson says, “with the usual tributes to the local masters of commerce.” Many of those masters of commerce advertised in the paper, but once they saw its reincarnation, they bolted--quickly. Within six months, Anderson had lost 90% of his advertisers.

For most newspapers, that would mean certain death. But Anderson said newsstand sales and $30-a-year mail subscriptions--many of them to the Bay Area and beyond--helped him stay afloat. Today, each edition sells 5,000 copies--more than four times the population of Boonville. They aren’t rich, but the publisher and his wife manage to survive.

This fact is highly distressing to Anderson’s many enemies, who keep hoping he will go broke or leave town. Anderson considered the second option last year, declaring himself disgusted by the region’s new appeal among “liberal, yuppie navel-gazers who prance around naked drinking wine on their redwood decks.”

Ultimately, he decided to stay put.

“I think I’ll be here to the bitter end,” he said. “I hike and do my push-ups every day, so I’m sure I can hang on another 20 years.”