Competing Publications at Saddleback Make News

At the Saddleback College student newspaper there is talk of lawsuit threats, personal vendettas, squelched free speech and suspicious hiring and firing.

That may sound like fodder for a story about the controversial South Orange County Community College District, a newsmaker of late because of infighting on its governing board and among faculty.

But the juicy stuff springs from doings in the newsroom of the Lariat itself or, more specifically, its step-cousin, the Lariette: “the mini, unofficial and certainly unauthorized online newspaper of Saddleback College,” as its motto states.

The Lariette, which experts say is one of only a few online underground college papers nationwide, is written and published by Kevin Zachary Hessel, a 20-year-old former editor of the Lariat. From his home computer in Dana Point, he reports the news he feels the real campus paper cannot cover.

That news mainly revolves around Lee Walker, the new Lariat faculty advisor, who Hessel suggests is an agent of the college district trustees and faculty union leaders sent to silence a widely read, persistent critic.

Union and board leaders, who did not return phone calls last week, have been targets in the past of the Lariat’s barbed editorials and aggressive news coverage.

It was the Lariat that first reported on a controversial campaign flier last year put out by the faculty union that opposed domestic partner benefits in language many criticized as homophobic. And the Lariat aggressively pursued the story on the board’s selection of a new Irvine Valley College president behind closed doors--an action that a Superior Court judge later ruled a violation of open public meeting laws.

Now, Hessel says, relying on sources at the paper, Walker has soured the newsroom climate by trying to muck with story choice and discourage unflattering commentary pieces--mainly submitted by Hessel about him. In addition, Hessel says, Walker is trying to get rid of staffers who disagree with his aim of stopping tough coverage of the trustees and union.

“The true incentive for my struggle: the preservation of excellence and the protection of freedom,” Hessel declares in the mission statement for the online paper, which premiered Oct. 11 and has received more than 100 “hits,” or visits, since Oct. 22, when he added a counter.

Hessel has posted six letters from faculty and staff supporting the Lariette and promises to publish any negative feedback too, if he gets any. “I’m trying to be an independent forum for free speech,” Hessel says.

Walker denies he has acted as a censor. He dismisses the Web site and its allegations as the rantings of a disgruntled student frustrated that he can no longer serve as editor because he has already completed the four-semester, three-credit journalism class for which the paper is a workshop.

The Lariette is full of “wild and unprovable comments,” said Walker, who last semester was named advisor by the college president in a move that Hessel and others saw as the machinations of trustees upset with coverage. He succeeded Kathleen Dorantes, who held the job for two years and had done an excellent job, said Mike Reed, journalism department chairman.

The conflict has divided the Lariat staff.

Said reporter Linda Fowler, recruited by Walker from an English class this semester: “The students see Lee as this stepparent who has kind of stepped in and wants to be the big daddy, and they don’t want him to be the big daddy. They want their mom back.”

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Outside observers say the situation is unusual. Typically, they say, college paper staffs have their hands full dealing with administrators, not their faculty advisors.

“Most people who stay in the field of advising have a real strong ethical commitment to protect students from censorship and not interfere,” said Mark Goodman, who heads a Washington legal advocacy group for the student press. “The national organization of college media advisors has a code of ethics that includes a provision that the advisor’s role is not to be a censor but a defender of student press freedom.”

By Hessel’s account, Walker has not lived up to the code. According to the Lariette, Walker sought to block publication of an unflattering commentary piece about himself by threatening to sue for libel. The article, written by Hessel, ran but with offending sentences deleted by the staff on its own volition, Lariat editor Ted Martin said.

The Lariette said Walker also dismissed a technical staffer he didn’t like and threatened the job of the instructional assistant--moves Hessel contends were designed to deteriorate the quality of the paper.

(Editors at the Irvine Valley College Voice, the student newspaper at the district’s other campus, report no problems with their part-time advisor and no interference from the board or administration.)

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Hessel assigns sinister motives to the abrupt replacement of Dorantes, a part-time instructor, with Walker, who as a full-time professor has first dibs on such advisory positions.

Saddleback President Ned Doffoney made the change effective at the beginning of this semester. Walker, a professor at the college for 26 years who says he has written freelance articles for several Midwestern newspapers, said Doffoney called him and offered the job after learning that Walker was interested in it. Walker held it 20 years ago.

Walker admits that tension hangs over the newsroom; he and staff members have met with the dean and department chair Reed three times since September. But he denies meddling in coverage or badgering students. He has never killed a story or even assigned one, he says, though he concedes that he has not held back from critiquing reporters’ and editors’ coverage of controversial issues and believes Hessel and Dorantes “ran the paper with a lot of negativity.”

The dismissal from the paper a few weeks ago of technician Linda Davies, a college employee who helped with the computers and proofread stories, was because Walker thought students should perform the tasks themselves, he said. She continues to work at the college in the in-house publications office.

He said he did not threaten to fire instructional assistant Joshua Prizer, another college employee, but he characterized his relationship with Prizer, a former Lariat editor, as a personnel problem. Prizer would not comment.

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Walker said he did suspend Lariat staffer Amer M. Ishaq, who oversees the paper’s Internet site, for two days but not, as Hessel reported, because he wrongly thought he was behind the Lariette. Rather, Walker said, he took the action because of an altercation stemming from Walker’s inquiry about whether Ishaq was involved in the Lariette site. During that exchange, he said, he thought Ishaq threatened to throw a newspaper at him. Ishaq would not comment on the suspension.

Walker sees himself as the target of a vendetta.

“He likes making stuff up,” Walker said of Hessel. “He is trying to create the reality.

“Does this mean every professor can be criticized on an Internet site?” Walker asked.

The Lariat has a circulation of 6,000, a staff of 24 and numerous awards from collegiate press associations. It was a finalist this year for a Pacemaker award, the college press equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize. It runs on a $50,000 annual budget derived mainly from college funds but also some advertising.

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Editor Martin complained that people already have begun to confuse his paper with the Lariette.

He disputes any suggestion that coverage of the board or union has faltered. Just last week, he points out, the paper ran an editorial that called the board “the rotten root” of the district’s troubles and once again pointed out a judge’s ruling that the board violated state open public meeting laws when it selected the Irvine Valley College president last semester behind closed doors.

Martin said he believes problems with Walker occurred mainly early in the semester, when “he was unsure what an advisor was supposed to do.” Martin said things got so bad that he called for Walker to resign earlier this semester. The issue then was Walker’s suggestion that a story about his appointment was not news. Walker also objected to the picture of him that the paper planned to publish with the story, Martin said.

But after meetings with the dean, things have quieted down, he said.

Meanwhile, Hessel vows to keep his site up for as long as he is at the college (he is due to graduate in the spring).

Reed, the journalism chair, backs Hessel--to a point: “I may not agree with everything on the page, but he certainly has the right to express his views.”