Nehmer | Courtesy of ccharbor.com Now that the Del Norte Triplicate is under new ownership, any concerns that Crescent City Harbor Commissioner Annie Nehmer had regarding potential defamation on the part of its previous editor have been resolved. Speaking to Redwood Voice Community News on Monday, Paul Boylan, Nehmer’s Davis-based attorney, said that his relationship with her has come to an amicable end. The big danger, he said, had been the Triplicate’s previous editor, Roger Gitlin, potentially damaging Nehmer’s reputation. But with the newspaper’s sale to Nehmer’s colleague on the Harbor District Board, former editor Dan Schmidt, Boylan said he’s “done everything I could for her.” “It doesn't surprise me that they would close the Triplicate and sell it to someone else,” he said of Country Media Inc., the newspaper’s previous owners. Country Media published its final edition of the Triplicate on Wednesday about six years after the Salem-based company took it over from Western Communications in June 2019. In an article published in Wednesday’s issue announcing the closure, Country Media Chief Executive Officer Joe Warren said “We knew going in there would have to be changes to enable us to maintain sustainability of these failing businesses.” However, no reason was given for the Triplicate’s impending closure. In a Sept. 16 Facebook post, Gitlin said the reasons for the Triplicate’s closure had to do with revenue. However, according to Boylan, the reason the 146-year-old newspaper has a new owner might have something to do with an opinion piece from frequent commenter Sam Strait that was published on Sept. 3. That piece, “Commissioner Nehmer’s Lawyer Seeks to Eliminate the Triplicate’s First Amendment Rights with Fraudulent Lawfare”, came after Boylan served Country Media with a retraction/correction demand in response to a July 9 article from Gitlin titled “Harbor Commissioner Sues Herself.” Paul Boylan “It was the guest commentary that outed the negotiations on Annie’s retraction/correction,” Boylan told Redwood Voice. “Those communications are almost always between counsel, off the record, and 99% of the time, they result in an apology. What that editorial did was bring all of that out in the public eye.” In his piece, which no longer appears on the Triplicate website as of Monday, Strait wrote that Gitlin was told to have no further contact with Nehmer or her family. Strait said that Gitlin was also prohibited from writing about Nehmer without prior written approval. “While I fully understand Country Media’s reluctance to expend its limited resources defending itself against fraudulent lawfare, it should be noted any person with the slightest of ill intent towards what is printed in the pages of the Triplicate can engage in this kind of behavior,” Strait wrote. “At that point, whatever is printed going forward negates the ability of the Triplicate to become the ‘fourth estate’ and further shields malfeasance from the public. The Triplicate in essence becomes useless as a factor when it comes to producing the ‘news’.” Boylan confirmed that Gitlin’s superiors with Country Media had told him to stay away from Nehmer because his criticisms of her are perceived to be biased. “That’s why he went to Sam to do all of this,” Boylan said, referring to Strait’s opinion piece. “Them publishing that and outing negotiations showed that [Country Media] couldn’t control him. They decided that the liability risk of a maverick editor was too great for them based on the income.” Nehmer hired Boylan in June after Gitlin had sent her an email questioning her about legal action she had taken against the Harbor District. The harbor commissioner was alarmed by Gitlin’s aggressive and confrontational tone, she said in a June 30 press release, and she felt she needed help. Those questions came after she had submitted petitions to cure and correct actions the Harbor District had taken that she said violated the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open meetings law. Boylan reached out to Warren, pointing out that while Nehmer’s legal action against the Harbor District was newsworthy, the parties in ongoing litigation habitually refrain from commenting on the proceedings as it’s going through the courts. Gitlin, Boylan told Redwood Voice in a July 15 article, had been pressuring Nehmer for a comment on those lawsuits. In another Facebook post on Sept. 16, Gitlin, who’s now writing as Eye On Del Norte, the moniker of his previous column with the Triplicate, opined on Nehmer’s censure by three of her CCHD colleagues. In his post, Gitlin described the meeting as “fraught with raw emotion” and disagreed with a member of the public who said the action was “anti-female.” Gitlin also brought up Nehmer’s sole dissent on the vote to appoint Mike Rademaker as harbormaster on a permanent basis and said she hired Boylan without consulting with her colleagues on the Board. According to Gitlin, the Harbor District’s legal expenses as a result of Nehmer’s action was $55,000. “Boylan, esq. also lawfared (sic) the Triplicate after I wrote an absolutely accurate article on “Harbor Commissioner Sues Herself,” Gitlin stated. Nehmer acknowledged that her professional relationship with Boylan ended with the sale of the Triplicate. She said that she’s aware that Gitlin still writes about CCHD matters on social media, but she’s too busy to read all of those posts — responding to the censure last week took all of her free time. Meanwhile, Schmidt says he plans to operate the new Triplicate out of a 100-year-old two-story building he owns at M and 2nd streets in Crescent City. He says he hopes to have sections of the newspaper devoted to senior citizens and another on youth and families. Schmidt says he also plans to court local businesses. For his first issue, however, Schmidt told Redwood Voice that he’ll probably write a letter to his subscribers “letting them know what’s going on.” “I expect to appeal directly to the subscribers and the community at large with a newspaper that’s better tuned to the needs, desires and expectations of the community,” he said.