Resignations Rock Newspapers

A chain of community newspapers in San Luis Obispo County has been hit by a series of resignations by editors and writers protesting the refusal of the chain’s owners to allow positive news about gays and abortion.

The Paso Robles Gazette began publishing eight months ago, and four other regional Gazettes now blanket this Central Coast county, arriving in the area’s 126,000 mailboxes each week.

But the free newspapers have become embroiled in controversy over publication of a small meeting announcement for a group called Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays, Bisexuals and Transgendered Persons.

Ron Bast, former editor of the Atascadero Gazette, said he was ordered to pull the announcement last week because of a policy by owners Mary and David Weyrich against running positive news about the gay community.

“This has to do with basic freedom-of-press issues,” said Bast, who has resigned as editor. “You don’t have a newspaper whose motto is ‘Hometown Journalism at Its Best’ and then exclude a large percentage of the population.”

In addition to Bast, the publisher and two of the three reporters at the Atascadero Gazette also quit. The resignations then spread to the San Luis Obispo Gazette, where the editor, two columnists and a freelancer quit. Three more people had left the chain by Thursday.

The Weyrichs declined to comment, but released a statement explaining their position and lamenting coverage of the controversy by competitors.

“Call us old-fashioned, but it hasn’t been too many years since our professed beliefs were the accepted norm in America,” they wrote.

The politics of this county are very much stratified by location, with the upscale university town of San Luis Obispo the most liberal area and the population growing more conservative in rural communities. David and Mary Weyrich are from Paso Robles at the northern edge of the county, a region where fields are increasingly being converted for growing wine grapes or locating housing tracts. They are wealthy vintners and developers, a Roman Catholic couple with eight children.

Gay rights activists said they were appalled but not surprised at the Weyrichs’ policies.

“He has the right to do this, of course, but the part that upset me personally is that he had a great deal of support starting out because he was representing this as a true community newspaper,” said Robyn Murphy, past president of the Central Coast Gay and Lesbian Alliance.

“We are persona non grata in his so-called community. The bad thing is that a lot of employees just didn’t have a clue what they had signed on for.”

Todd Hansen, chief operating officer for all five gazettes, said the Weyrichs were always clear that they wanted a “family-values” alternative to other local newspapers. He said he wished he could have personally explained that to all employees. The chain employs about 70 people.

“We don’t have any problems with homosexuals,” Hansen said. “We just don’t like the acts they do.”

On abortion, Hansen said, “The Weyrichs and the Gazettes will not report anything which promotes the taking of life.”

Hansen stressed that the company has gay employees and will cover news as it happens, but will not promote activities or take advertising that supports the gay lifestyle or abortion. For example, he said, the papers would cover the bombing of an abortion clinic but would not run a clinic’s ads.

He noted that the papers have changed one policy as a result of the controversy, and will now run more diverse viewpoints on pages where letters to the editor are published.

The controversy has unfolded in the last week against the backdrop of a regional newspaper war.

Until the Weyrichs started the gazettes, journalism in the county was dominated by the daily San Luis Obispo Tribune and a series of weeklies in smaller towns. Knight Ridder owns the Tribune and weeklies in Morro Bay and Cambria, and the media giant last year started a Paso Robles weekly to challenge Weyrich on his home turf. In Paso Robles, there are now three weeklies, including the Country News Press, all vying for advertising dollars.

The Weyrichs were part owners of Martin Media, the fifth largest billboard company in the nation, before it sold for $610 million two years ago. They also own Martin & Weyrich Winery, which used to be the Martin Brothers Winery.

Susan Stewart, who resigned from her position as editor of the Weyrich-owned San Luis Obispo Magazine on Tuesday, said she was floored when she heard of the anti-gay and anti-abortion policies. While she believes that many newspapers often have unstated biases, she felt that she had no choice once the Weyrichs made clear what they will put in their publications.

“I simply made the decision,” she said. “I’ve had no time to really think about where my next meal is coming from.”

Hansen said that about 200 people have called in demanding that they be taken off the mailing list, and about the same number have called in to support the Weyrichs. He acknowledged that some advertisers have canceled, while one man doubled his advertising.

Missy Erickson expressed support for the Weyrichs as she dropped her daughter off at North County Christian School in Atascadero.

“It’s amazing to me that if you are on the flip side of these issues, you can put whatever you want in a newspaper,” she said. “I completely support David Weyrich. It’s his newspaper.”

Robert Hervey is an active member of the support group whose meeting announcement sparked the dispute. At 73, he’s a retired veterinarian and the father of a gay son who is a music teacher in San Juan Capistrano.

“We don’t promote being gay,” said Hervey, an Atascadero resident. “We are just there to help the parents and friends of gay people. This is all crazy. You don’t become gay by finding out when our meetings are held.”