Page 2 - califbusiness1989july

cott Newhall's pale brand of journalism
blue eyes blaze like against contemporary
an acetylene torch. standards of profitability
He leans forward. "I and objectivity-"the clat-
wish you wouldn't ter and clang," he says, "of
get involved in this," he today's branch-office style
begins, his aristocratic newspaper publishing."
tenor rising like mission To be decided as well
bells before· a gathering may be the fate of the sur-
storm. "Because it's going round.ing Santa Clarita
to be a bitter one," he says, Valley, the immense dry
"and we're going to kick riverbed just 30 miles
hell out of you." north of Los Angeles,
Hell hath no fury like BY ELLIOT BLAIR whose ancient tributaries
SMITH
this scion of wealth and cut deep canyons into the
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
privilege, to whom the earth and which are
MARK HANAUER
grand sweep of California filling rapidly anew with
history belongs. At issue this eve- the furthest outreaches of Southern
ning, over an elegant dinner in the California's urban sprawl. In his
shadow of the Tehachapi and Santa thundering front-page editorials,
Susana mountains, amid the man- Scott Newhall often boasted that the
zanita, oaks and desert scrub, is an bloodlines of Tombstone, Abilene
old-fashioned newspaper war that and Bullfrog, NV, ran through this
pits a landed family against powerful "grand and noble valley." But it is no
corporate interests; Scott Newhall, longer the Old West's final outpost.
74, and his crusading San Francisco Now, he fears, Santa Clarita is becom-

California Publishing's Brilliant Barnum

20 CAL I FO R N I A B US I NESS I July l 989