By Bryan Toporek

Biography:

When examining Nicholas F. Benton’s life path, you cannot help but wonder how one man could have experienced so many twists and turns in his life. Benton showed an early interest in journalism, getting his start with his very own Benton Star publication at age seven and moving on to work as an award-winning editor of his local high school and college newspapers.  Benton received a B.A. in English from Westmont College in California in 1966, before heading to the Pacific School of Religion where he earned a Master of Divinity degree in 1969.  After his time in seminary, he became a key contributor to the Berkeley Barb and wrote the editorial for the first edition of the Gay Sunshine newspaper. 
Benton started working as a political organizer for the U.S. Labor Party in 1974.  The U.S. Labor Party had ties to Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouche movement. Benton found himself quickly rising through the party.  In 1978, Benton ran for governor of California as the Labor Party candidate against Jerry Brown, whom he criticized for his anti-nuclear policies and for being an “agent of influence” of London.  Although he lost the election, his cantankerous campaign won the attention of the LaRouche movement, and Benton went on to become an aide and spokesman to LaRouche and later the spokesman for LaRouche’s National Democratic Policy Committee. In Washington, D.C., he became the bureau chief and eventually the White House correspondent for the Executive Intelligence Review, LaRouche’s own press service.
As a White House correspondent, Benton covered the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and even appeared briefly in a White House press briefing on an episode of the TV show “Murphy Brown.”  Benton’s time as White House correspondent took him across the world, evidenced by the international posters decorating his office.  In October 1986, he covered the Reykjavik Summit between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.  Three years later, Benton traveled to Malta for a meeting between President George H. W. Bush and Soviet Premier Gorbachev. A month after the Democratic National Convention (where the LaRouche movement handed out flyers about Michael Dukakis undergoing treatment for mental illness), Benton asked Reagan whether Dukakis should publicize his health records, to which Reagan replied, “I’m not going to pick on an invalid.”

After 20 years in the world of politics, Benton knew that he needed a change in professional landscape.  In 1987, Benton founded his own news service called Century News Service, and four years later he launched the Falls Church News-Press.  The News-Press is a weekly paper that is circulated to 30,500 people throughout Falls Church and selected parts of Fairfax County, Arlington County and Washington D.C.  Since founding the paper, Benton has become one of Falls Church’s most notable citizens, serving two terms as president of the Greater Falls Church Chamber of Commerce and receiving the “Pillar of the Community” award from the Chamber twice.  The News-Press has been named “Business of the Year” by the Falls Church City Council both in its first year of operation and in 2001, and Benton was the marshal of Falls Church’s annual Memorial Day Parade in 2001.  Benton also continues work at the News-Press, serving as owner and editor and presiding over its recent 18th birthday.

Benton has never been someone who backs down to anyone.  In early April of 2008, the Washington City Paper named the Falls Church News-Press the “Best Remnant of the Liberal Media.”  Benton may have helped his paper gain this distinction by publishing a column in 2007 about his association with Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouche movement. He says he was the first person to describe personal involvement in the LaRouche movement in print.  He suggested that he “began a measured, phased exit in [the late ‘70s], the way a lot of former members left, completed in the 1980s” once he realized “by the late 1970s, LaRouche’s movement had turned decidedly ugly, into something existing only for the purposes of LaRouche’s own aggrandizement and the twisted agendas of too many sinister forces that seemed to influence him.”
            "There are many people who were once associates of LaRouche, who cut that off once the true nature of it became clear, to emerge as highly accomplished and successful," says Benton.  Undeniably, Benton had a smirk on his face after delivering that line, knowing that he could count himself in that lucky group of people.

 

Question and Answer:

Q: After almost 20 years in politics, what made you leave to form the News-Press?

BENTON: When I came to Falls Church in 1985, one of the first things I noticed was that they didn’t have a newspaper. As a newspaper person, it became rather evident to me that this could be a place for a newspaper.

Q: How did the News-Press come to be?

BENTON: There was a big election in Falls Chruch in 1990, and I said, “Why don’t we do something called Election Night Live?”  We got volunteers from this cable-access class that the city of Falls Church was sponsoring.  It was a huge hit.  I knew it then – I said, “This is it.  This is our ‘go’ for the newspaper.”  We had to turn the success of the TV special into the launch of the News-Press.

Q: What goes into deciding to make your own paper versus writing on staff for someone else’s paper?

BENTON: I’ve always been a little outside the box when I work.  Journalism is one of the hardest jobs in the world, because you always have to stay fresh with everything that you’re doing, since you’re reporting on the newest news happening in the world.  I wanted to form the News-Press for a few reasons.  I wanted it to become a community newspaper, first of all, because every community deserves its own newspaper, and Falls Church is no different.  But more importantly, I wanted the News-Press to be a community newspaper with a much wider appeal than just Falls Church.

Q: How do you mean?

BENTON: We just made a media guide to send out to potential advertisers.  I ran a TV ad a few months ago in Northern Virginia with the theme of “The News-Press is a lot more than Falls Church.”  It listed our national-affairs columnists, weekly movie reviews from Roger Ebert in our paper, poker tips from Daniel Negraneu, etcetera.  We run a weekly column by Wayne Besen, “Anything But Straight,” dedicated to gay and lesbian issues.  People thought that you couldn’t do those kinds of things with a local, community paper.  That’s why we wanted to be more than that.

Q: How did you raise the money to start up a paper?

BENTON: I actually barely had any money when I wanted to start the paper, but I had a pretty good idea of how everything works.  I got a list of all the members of the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce and mailed them all letters with stamped return postcards explaining what I was trying to do.  The postcard asked, “If we launch this newspaper, would you potentially be interested in advertising?”  Over half the people we mailed them to mailed them back within the week, so I took this huge stack of postcards to the bank, they gave me credit, and the rest is history.

Q: Do you have any specific responsibilities in managing the line between founder, owner, and current staff writer on the paper?

BENTON: That’s always a dangerous line.  Most papers try their damnedest to keep the advertisement and editorial sides separated, just to avoid any potential mishaps down the road.  We can’t have a 10-page layout about some local business in Falls Church only to have a six-page ad spread of theirs later in the paper, clearly.  Being owner and founder as well as writer, I have to be especially careful of that.  Can’t be accepting free meals at restaurants, can’t be getting free services anywhere – it’s a lot like the restrictions placed on our advertising department.  Most importantly, as stated in our top principle every week in the paper, we’ve gotta strive to keep the news “clean and fair” and “never mix business and editorial policy”.

Q: What steps do you take to make sure that the news reported in the News-Press is clean and fair?

BENTON: Usually, the more hate mail you get about a story, the better it is.  (laughs)  Actually, we got in a huge fight with the local Falls Church Episcopal Church over the “Anything But Straight” column we run in the paper.  We had a whole slew of op-eds and e-mails and letters a while back, started by a kid at a Falls Church middle school describing his coming out.  The church is one of those that believes gay people should be in jail.  I was fighting it out with them for years – they were the big bullies who tried to force their opinions on everyone else.  I wrote editorials and articles defending myself and gay people in the community.  But by the time Besen’s column got into the paper, everyone was pretty spent.  And I’ll tell you, there are more people that write to me or see me in town, people I don’t even know, that really show their appreciation for my viewpoints and for my dedication to taking a stand.

Q: What do you think about the News-Press being named CityPaper’s “Best Remnant of the Liberal Media” for 2008?

BENTON: It’s huge for us.  It’s a great recognition of us, of the things we’ve been doing with the paper, and with the things we want to keep doing.  Hundreds of thousands of people read this edition of CityPaper.  We want to keep growing, keep expanding, and awards like this are exactly what we need to keep doing what we want to do be doing.

 

Sidebar:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF LYNDON LAROUCHE AND THE LAROUCHE MOVEMENT

1969: Lyndon LaRouche creates the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). After being expelled from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Columbia in early 1969, the movement became highly regimented and secretive. Members became entirely devoted to the group and to LaRouche.

1971: LaRouche organizes the New Solidarity International Press Service. Founds the Executive Intelligence Review, a weekly publication, and co-founds the Fusion Energy Foundation.

1972: The U.S. Labor Party comes into existence.  LaRouche created the party due to feelings that both of the major parties had abandoned American ideals, citing Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin as particular ideological entities to admire. He used the Labor Party as a political blanket for a number of years.

1973: “Operation Mop-up.” According to reports in the Village Voice and the New York Times, NCLC members physically attacked members of the Communist party during meetings and randomly on the street. NCLC members insisted that they acted on self defense – LaRouche responds with “We most dispose of this stinking corpse [the Communist Party] to ensure that it cannot act as a host for maggots and other parasites… our job is to pulverize the Communist Party” in an editorial in his newspaper.  Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, reports later surface that the FBI began considering an assassination attempt on LaRouche.

1976: LaRouche runs for President of the United States under the U.S. Labor Party. He receives 40,043 votes (0.05%) in the election. His campaign featured the first 30-minute television address by the candidate, which has since become a staple in presidential politicking.

1978-1980: LaRouche begins a massive campaign for his second try at the presidency in 1980. Targets farmers, small businessmen and the Teamsters Union. Decides to join the Democratic Party so he can run for the Democratic ticket; the U.S. Labor Party is disbanded. Many in the Democratic Party disagree with LaRouche’s views. He forms a Political Action Committee called the National Democratic Policy Committee (NDPC).

1984: Along with his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, LaRouche founds the Schiller Institute in Germany, an organization meant to serve much like the U.S. Labor Party, as an umbrella for his particular beliefs. Amelia Boynton Robinson, an American Civil Rights movement leader and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, a leader of the French Resistance, both help LaRouche with the Schiller Institute. He also runs, unsuccessfully, for president for the third time, using his vast resources to purchase 14 TV ads during the campaign.

1986-1988: The FBI and Virginia state authorities raid the LaRouche headquarters in Leesburg, Va. in October 1986, searching for evidence to support fraud accusations. Press reports in the 1980s suggested that LaRouche had participated in fundraising activities that violated tax laws, credit-card fraud and the conversion of publication sales into donations for the LaRouche political campaigns that were then matched by the Federal Election Commission. LaRouche and six others were charged with conspiracy to obstruct the investigation and mail fraud. In December 1988, a federal jury in Alexandria, Va., convicted LaRouche and his associates, sentencing LaRouche to 15 years in prison. He served five years of his sentence and was paroled. LaRouche published advertisements in major newspapers insisting that his jailing came because of a political conspiracy wishing to silence his beliefs.

 

Photo credit:

Metro Weekly