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cott Newhall, dashing and handsome, is, with his wife
S pocket. But his fortunes were tied to family interests, and those
interests were tightly controlled by the ancient McBean. Not
Ruth, 78, almost alone at the top of the old order. For 25
years, as editor and publisher of The Signal, he represented
coincidentally, after the crusty patriarch retired in 1968, the
Newhalls took the land company public through a limited stock
the contrary forces oflaw and disorder in a land he called
Jackass Gulch. Before that, as editor of the San Francisco
Chronicle, he buried William Randolph Hearst's famous Ex- sale, forever removing it from the whims of hot-tempered
mavericks the family had in seemingly endless supply. Unfor-
aminer. "He's Mencken with manners," a protege says admir- tunately, for Scott, the damage had already been done. In 1972,
ingly. In Santa Clarita, Scott was powerful and iconoclastic a newspaper broker introduced Scott Newhall to Charles H.
enough to often tilt against the family land company, which at Morris, the publisher of small daily newspapers in Augusta and
times ran roughshod over the community. And he brought to Savannah, GA, who agreed to advance him a $125,000 loan con-
the backward canyon country a bold, outlandish style ofleader- vertible to a five-year option to buy 81 percent of the newspaper.
ship perfected in the gilded corridors of old San Francisco. As fate would have it, The Signal turned its first profit five years
But the crusading front-page editorials that made Scott later and Morris took control.
Newhall loved and feared over a career spanning 50 years ulti- Of Morris Newspaper Corp.'s 39 newspapers, which are pub-
mately felled California publishing's brilliant Barnum. The lished in seven states and yield annual revenues of$108 million,
beginning of the end came more than 20 years ago, when The Signal is now the flagship, with annual revenues of $7 mil-
Newhall family patriarch Atholl McBean withdrew support for lion and a pre-tax profit margin last year "in the 20s."
a $125,000 loan that Scott needed to keep the leaky Signal afloat. Charles Morris liked and admired Scott Newhall when he
McBean, chairman of a Newhall Land and Farm predecessor, met him in 1972. Over the years, however, their relationship-
White Investment Co., concluded he'd felt the sting of The Sig- in which Scott played the surrogate father-grew strained. The
nal editorials too often and vowed to make his nephew pay. Newhalls chafed at Morris's penny-pinching, contending it de-
Scott tried to maintain the publishing venture out of his own stroyed staff morale. And they believe Morris cheated Ne.whall's
Ruth Newhall, a legendaryformer San Francisco Chronicle reporter, ran The Signal for years while Scott tilted at windmills.

July I 989 I CAL I FORNI A B U S INES S 23