What started just before local elections in April 2006 with Herndon residents opening their mailboxes to find a new monthly news publication may disappear just as suddenly as it arrived, as The Herndon Compass, a monthly volunteer-driven local newspaper, announced last month that it will not be printing further issues.
Citing a lack of advertising investment and available resources from current publisher Master Media Group, Inc., Potomac resident and writer Nathan Muller, volunteer editor-in-chief of The Herndon Compass, said that the group of writers who have provided the material for the Compass in its 10 published issues will be discussing this month how they will proceed, if at all, with the project.
"You have to understand that all of our writers were doing this simply as a volunteer effort," said Muller. "All the money we were making from the advertising went to pay for printing, postage costs, things like that."
"Unfortunately it appears as if our current publisher didn't want to keep our arrangement as it was."
Winchester-based Master Media Group, Inc. describes itself on its web site as a marketing strategy and public relations firm. Publisher and Leesburg resident Ben Weber, a former Republican candidate for the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, is also the publisher of the Purcellville Gazette.
Several calls made to Weber for comment on this story were not returned.
THE HERNDON COMPASS has not been without its controversies. It has been described by some, including in a post-election Web statement written by Muller, as a tool to sway voter opinion in Herndon's mayor and Town Council elections last May.
Those elections, which were largely seen as a referendum on the establishment of a day labor hiring site in town, saw the ouster of most of its proponents, former Herndon Mayor Michael O'Reilly and Town Council Members Carol Bruce and Steve Mitchell. In its place, residents elected six candidates, including the mayor, who vocally expressed dissatisfaction with the former council's decision on the day labor site.
It was these candidates who received exclusive political advertising in The Herndon Compass, in messages paid for by "candidate supporters," including James and Debbie Taylor of the conservative political action committee, America's PAC. Muller and his wife also maintain the conservative blog, "ForTheCause.us", which features news and opinion assailing illegal immigration.
In the run up to the elections, with several grass roots organizations operating in town in support of candidates on both sides of the day labor issue is when the Compass first appeared. Its April and May editions featured a solid block of letters to the editor railing O'Reilly and the council members who supported the day labor site as well as a number of stories highlighting what it described as the negative impacts of the day labor hiring site.
To Bruce, The Herndon Compass was a political tool utilized to "manipulate" voters into supporting those candidates who lined up against the day labor site, adding that she felt it had an impact on the results of the election.
"The real newspapers in town work hard to remain objective, but the Compass had a set point of view that they wanted people to have and they manipulated the facts and wrote highly opinionated articles to achieve that," she said. "When you pick up campaign literature, you know its campaign literature ... but this was a very clever attempt to influence voter opinion by making people think that what they were reading was fact."
BUT THE COMPASS' intention was not about attempting to deceive or manipulate readers, but was to get to the stories that were not covered by the local media, said Muller, who said that all of the stories were factually correct.
"There were issues in that election that weren't getting covered ... there were people in town who had stories to tell, that were not being told in the local papers and we had access to those people," Muller said. "There were a significant number of illegal aliens in town and no one was reporting on them and their impact."
The Compass's coverage of illegal immigration, Muller said, drew praise from residents and council members and more people hoping to contribute articles.
"I think it drew the people who were dissatisfied with some of the coverage in town ... and those were the people who ended up writing for us," he said. "Some of the candidates described it to me as a breath of fresh air."
Describing the newspaper's coverage as always "ethical and accurate" Muller said that some of the stories were chosen due to public policy opinions held by the staff.
"If the mayor and Town Council wanted to limit spending on projects, we favor that because we don't want a small town to just have endless debt piled up," Muller said. "If the idea is to get better enforcement and security in the community when it comes to illegal aliens, we support that as well."
"There were good attempts to be balanced and I think the paper reflects that."
Requests made to staff writer Susan Powell for an interview were not returned.
AFTER THE ELECTIONS, the Compass continued printing once a month, appearing in residents' mailboxes and in the news stands located in Herndon municipal buildings and local businesses. The most recent edition, listed as the February-March issue, has been released solely via the Internet.
While the future is not certain for the publication, Muller said that he hopes to see the paper continue to be printed.
"The town will be minus another viewpoint ... they'll be without some of those stories that we're covering," if the paper doesn't return to regular publication, he said. Muller said that he did not know if the paper would just come back for the next local election in May of 2008, but wouldn't rule it out as a possibility.
For Bruce, the impact of the Compass has already been registered in town, even if it doesn't return to full publication.
"They've already accomplished their main objective and that was getting the anti-immigration candidates elected," she said.