Reason to Question

If it's giving away ads to take business from the Weekly, no wonder the Guardian's hurting.

I could probably fill the rest of this issue's news hole with sales rep tales of silly Guardian discounting. But I won't. Instead, I'll just wonder at the exquisite absurdity of it all.

When the Bay Guardian sues us for supposedly rapacious discounting while it, actually, is dramatically undercutting us in price, does it mean that the owners of the Guardian realize their ad reps can't sell an ad in the paper without resorting to money-losing discounts and have undertaken a lawsuit as a sort of Hail Mary financial play? Or has Bruce Brugmann become so used to depicting himself and his paper as saintly and progressive that he really and truly cannot tell fact from fancy?

Some people offer the events from a glorious past as a partial explanation for the litigation and ensuing propaganda offensive the San Francisco Bay Guardian has launched against the paper I edit. In his story on the lawsuit, Redmond harked back to 1970, when the Guardian filed suit against the San Francisco Newspaper Agency over the legality of a joint operating agreement between the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner. The suit, Redmond wrote, "asserted that the monopoly daily combine was using its market power to destroy smaller competitors." The $500,000 settlement the JOA paid was, Redmond noted, the money that allowed the Bay Guardian to go from twice a month to weekly publication.

It's the quintessential Bay Guardian story line: Independent, progressive, family-owned newspaper takes on the powerful corporatists -- and wins!

Even some people I know who despise Bruce Brugmann offer this tale from the past as explanation for the present. In their eyes, Brugmann is trying to relive his glory days, to cement his place in local lore with a win over (and a chunk of money from) the out-of-town heathens of New Times.

But I'm not willing to indulge this kind of pop psychologizing. I think the explanation is unreasonable, because I think it plays into Bay Guardian fantasy, and leads away from facts and truth. In the Brugmann fantasy of a progressive, saintly, and perfect Bay Guardian, a small, family-owned business is always fighting a David- and-Goliath struggle against corporate monsters.

But how defenseless and family-owned is this particular entity, really? What about the 10 people who apparently aren't members of Bruce Brugmann's family and who've been listed recently as owners of 1 percent or more of the Bay Guardian? What about the multimillionaire real estate investor with the heiress wife?

In an October 2002 "Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation" filed with the U.S. Postal Service, the Bay Guardian listed 13 people as owning at least a 1 percent interest in the paper. (The statements are required of publications that receive discounted postal rates; a mailing requirements clerk told me the 2002 statement was the last the Guardian filed, and its periodical authorization was suspended in 2003.)

The ownership list includes just first initials and last names. Three of the names appear to be members of Brugmann's family.

One of the other names is D Werby. I believe this "D Werby" is Donald Werby, who with his brother Robert Werbe built a real estate fortune that at one time included ownership of a dozen hotels, among them San Francisco's historic Clift Hotel. They also developed Gramercy Towers, a residential complex near California and Taylor streets, and held ownership in the San Francisco Gray Line bus tour company. Donald Werby (he reportedly changed the final "e" to a "y" because his wife preferred the spelling) died in the summer of 2002, which means the postal statement filed later that year came after his passing. Robert Werbe died late in 2004.

I called Donald Werby's son, Todd Werby, an executive at one of the companies the brothers owned, Grosvenor Properties, and asked him if the D Werby on the postal statement was his father; he said it was. When I asked the size of his father's stake, and whether it had passed down to him, he demurred. "Why don't you ask Bruce?" he said.

Donald Werby had a strange and interesting life. His wife, according to a wire report, was one of three daughters who survived William Black, the founder of the Chock Full o'Nuts Corp., a coffee, baked goods, and fast-food firm that had annual sales of $115 million in the year before his 1983 death.

Donald Werby was also a friend of and patron to Anton LaVey, the public face of the Church of Satan, helping him remain in the church's headquarters, the infamous Black House on California Street, during his declining years. Werby's civic standing fell after San Francisco police raided a Mission District brothel in 1988. According to the Chronicle, Werby was subsequently indicted on charges of having sex with prostitutes, some allegedly underage, and giving cocaine to juveniles. He pleaded guilty to four charges involving teenage prostitutes and was sentenced to community service and a $300,000 fine, the Chronicle reported.

I think it's reasonable to ask who -- beyond the real estate magnate and heiress -- really owned and owns the newspaper that is filing pot-kettle-black lawsuits while claiming progressive sainthood. Brugmann responded to my requests for an interview in this way: