I wondered why I'd never heard of this, then went to the website link Jack has generously provided. I discovered they are charging $1 a copy ($3 a copy if you want to download it on-line).

I have a strange feeling no one's going to be getting too riled up about a paper no one reads.

I first read of the Anderson Valley Advertiser in about 1985 or 6, in one of those wonderful quirky little center column features in The Wall Street Journal. I subscribed for at least a dozen years. That's where, in fact, I picked up the "Newspapers should have no friends" Pulitzer quote that I have cited in this blogspace (as the precise opposite of how The Oregonian functions.)

I look forward to reading Bruce's various takes on Eugene, where most of my family now lives (having moved out of the Rogue Valley).

I guess I'll have to pop another $22 for a yearly print subscription. The AVA was always a labor of passion, never a moneymaker. I'd suggest a year's close reading before writing it off.

http://www.liarunlimited.com
The sordid history of Bruce Anderson and the Anderson Valley Advertiser

http://www.oilempire.us/anderson.html

New York Times
November 30, 2004

He Ranted, He Raved, He Rode Out on His Own Rail
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

BOONVILLE, Calif., Nov. 26 - Annie Esposito, the news
director at KZYX, the local public radio station, is one of
many people here who were not exactly heartbroken when
Bruce Anderson, the rapier-witted, acid-penned editor of
the weekly Anderson Valley Advertiser, announced that he
was moving to Oregon.
To Mr. Anderson, the town muckraker and ranter in chief,
KZYX was a "hippie-ding enterprise," a symbol of the
"wine-and-cheese gentry," the "lib-lab yuppie hypocrites,"
the "educrats," the "thumbsuckers," the "New Age
barnacles," the "feral enviro-Druids" and other
well-meaning ineffectual "Nice People" who flocked to
hippie festivals in the early 1970's and stayed.
"There were all sorts of theories about Bruce," said Ms.
Esposito, 62, whose offices include an old caboose. "That
he was crazy. That he worked for the F.B.I. But the real
reason he flamed us horrible wimpy liberals was, it sells
newspapers."

....

The changing nature of the valley was also a factor, Mr.
Anderson said. "Suddenly it became a wine region, with
total strangers dominating the political life," he said. "I
began daydreaming about murdering certain people. I said,
you know, this place isn't really healthy for me anymore."
Mr. Anderson leaves a tidal wave of opinion in his wake."

A lot of people feel there were two Bruces," said K. C.
Meadows, the managing editor of The Ukiah Daily Journal.
"There was the nice, caring guy who loved his community.
Then there was the Bruce who sat down behind that
typewriter and just slammed people."
Mr. Anderson has been jailed several times, most notably
for punching a former superintendent at a school board
meeting ("He called me a 10th-rate McCarthyite," Mr.
Anderson said. "I thought I was at least first-rate").

....

At times, he has strayed into fiction. Two years ago, he
published a bogus interview with Mike Sweeney, the former
husband of an Earth First activist, Judi Bari, in which Mr.
Sweeney confessed to having planted the bomb that maimed
her in 1990 (she died of cancer in 1997). Mr. Sweeney set
up an anti-Anderson Web site, www.LiarUnlimited.com. "I
regret it," Mr. Anderson said of the article. "It was kind
of over the top."

from Mark:
He may claim to regret it, but the Anderson Valley Advertiser in California still promotes these hoaxes on the website, and the "new" AVA Oregon has already published similar stuff.
see http://www.theava.com/bari.html for some psychopathic rants
see http://www.judibari.org for accurate information