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The 12 is a group of editors, reporters and one publisher who severed ties in mid-February with the fledgling Gazette chain of hometown newspapers after the management instituted a policy of not running positive stories on homosexuals or abortion rights. The 8-month-old enterprise of five weekly publications, which are direct-mailed free to every person in the county, was founded by former billboard magnate and Paso Robles resident David Weyrich.

Also Today The San Francisco Examiner, 1887-2000 Underfunded and outmanned, the scrappy afternoon paper could sometimes prevail over the competition -- but couldn't survive its own mismanagement. By Scott Rosenberg

Weyrich and his wife, Mary, co-owner of the Gazette papers, are by all accounts conservative Catholics with deep pockets and little experience in publishing. But when Weyrich started his Gazette papers in the summer of last year, he began hiring a number of experienced reporters and editors. Their mission: to cover local "upbeat" news and avoid controversy at all costs.

"I was happy to do that as long as I could still be honest with the reporting," says Kathy Johnston, who worked as a reporter for the San Luis Obispo and Atascadero Gazettes as well as the Weyrich-owned San Luis Obispo magazine. "But when it became clear that the definition of community the publications were supposed to follow was not the definition the community has established for itself, I couldn't do that anymore."

Johnston first learned of the paper's anti-gay, anti-abortion stance when her editor at the Atascadero paper, Ron Bast, went toe-to-toe with chief operating officer Todd Hansen over a calendar listing for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. The meeting announcement had been running since November with no complaint, until Weyrich supposedly saw the notice and gave the order that it be pulled.

"I got a note from my publisher, Steve Martin, around Valentine's Day saying he had gotten word from the Weyrichs that we were to stop running the PFLAG announcement," explains Bast, a lifelong Atascadero resident. "I pulled the item and told him we needed to talk with Hansen. Hansen has no background in news at all -- neither do the Weyrichs. I assumed they didn't know they were crossing an ethical line. I didn't know at the time there was a really strong right-wing Christian thing going on.

"Todd Hansen came down and said that the way it's going to work is that we're not going to publish anything positive about gays or abortion. If we publish negative things, that's OK."

Bast says he then engaged in a surreal tit-for-tat with Hansen about what they could and could not cover. What about an AIDS bicycle ride that brought 10,000 people through town? Hansen said no. Could the paper publish a letter from PFLAG responding to the removal of their calendar listing? Again the answer was no. Say there's a local girl who gets an illegal abortion and dies? That would be acceptable because it portrays abortion negatively.

Seeking to have Hansen moderate his position, Bast gathered up codes of ethics from various news outlets such as the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times to present to Hansen. But Hansen would have none of it, according to Bast:

Hansen said, "Look, I don't care what the AP or the Washington Post does. This is our newspaper and we'll run it exactly the way we want."

So I asked, "Will you publish your stand, saying 'We're a Christian newspaper dedicated to the values of heterosexual union and pro-life'?"

And he said, "No."

I asked, "Why not?"

He said, "Because its bad for business."

That's when I decided to bail.

Bast resigned on Feb 17th, not far behind publisher Steve Martin, who had given notice two days before. A slew of other resignations followed, and there could be 13 or 14 depending upon who you ask.

Hansen, the right-wing man's right hand, so to speak, regards the mass exodus from the Gazette chain as an emotional overreaction. Speaking for his elusive boss, Hansen can't seem to figure out what the problem is.

"We've chosen not to promote abortion or the gay-and-lesbian lifestyle," says Hansen, who has worked for Weyrich for almost 9 years. "We haven't created a big deal on this. The only people who have created a big deal on this are the people that've left."

Hansen says the charge that the Gazette's employees were not told of the chain's conservative stance is false.

"I think it's been a clear understanding from Day 1 of the philosophy, it just probably wasn't understood completely."

Huh?

"You gotta remember, you're talking to the people who have left," Hansen explains. "Usually the people who've left don't have a very good feeling about the place they were at. Remember the context of where it's coming from."

Along these lines, Hansen says that there's no problem with the Gazette papers covering, say, an AIDS bicycle ride, since AIDS is "society's problem." In fact the Gazette editors and reporters are free to do any story they like as long as gays and lesbians are not portrayed positively and no one contradicts the view that "abortion is murder."

Next page | The Weyrichs come out of the closet