If you're worried about future-of-the-press issues, the current deal in Chestnut Hill makes the Inky/Daily News debacle look like a happy page out of Philly Style.

On Oct. 6, embattled Chestnut Hill Local editor Jim Sturdivant, after Tuesday's weekly deadline close, glanced up to see two women angling into his Germantown Avenue office. In the lead was Maxine Dornemann, president of the Chestnut Hill Community Association, which publishes the Local. Behind her was Nancy Berger, heretofore a listings editor and proofreader. They chatted pleasantly for a few moments, then casually announced they were "restructuring" the paper. The next day, Berger would be managing editor, with oversight of production, circulation, display and classified advertising and editorial.

Sturdivant was stunned. Although there'd been "restructuring" rumblings for a month since Karl Eric Standberg had been railroaded out of his longtime ad sales manager job for speaking truth to power, no approaches had been made to him for input. He hoped the bloodletting had appeased Dornemann's "good news only" faction. The main battle now was about whether the paper would keep its free-press traditions or become a corporate-PR juggernaut.

Sturdivant had been in Dornemann's crosshairs since alienating her by penning "critical" editorials for six months, objecting to, among other things, the increasingly political and decreasing "service orientation" of the community association; and the constant "good news only" mantras from Dornemann's cronies who seemed to feel all that ailed the Hill was "a negative image" fostered by the kids at the Local. Still, he wasn't expecting a coup.

On Oct. 18, Berger and several of her kaffeeklatsch vets trooped into Sturdivant's office to urge him to kill an editorial that inveighed against proposed plans to hire Alison Grove, a PR hottie, for $90,000, and use the Local to do it. He asked if it was an order. According to Sturdivant, Berger said it was. He asked that that be put in writing. The written version came back as a request. Sturdivant printed the editorial and wrote a letter of resignation. The executive committee quickly accepted, and gave Sturdivant, enormously popular with the Local troops, a few hours to leave. The staff revolted with a group-signed editorial that read, in part, "Most disturbing is the lack of newspaper and publishing experience at the highest levels of what is now being treated and run as a corporation."

What's clear is that the idea of press freedom is changing; we're morphing into stenographic info downloads over good reads.

CHCA management was Fellini-esque from the jump -- 64 members (38 now) on the board; too frequent turnover; no policy continuity; dozens of committees vying with each other for power; bloc voting; backstabbing; and a millionaire loon in Maine, Lloyd Wells, the founder of the whole mess, still trying to control things via e-mail.

This is a matter of wealthy people with too much time on their hands playing at democracy. What's different now is that Wells and his homey old Green Party, who imagined they were "reinventing democracy" by filibustering savagely in the name of "free speech" and driving more reasonable folks out of CHCA and the Local through sheer exhaustion, are now being supplanted by Dornemann's polished corporate Prada minds.

"We are corporate thinkers," Dornemann told me during a recent interview. "I think the corporate model is the way we live now." In her way, she was being honest. On the other hand, some of the old-timers actually believed in their screwy ideals. But today's power bloc appears to be applying Mass Marketing 101 techniques from, say, Pepperdine University, the refuge of failed Bush administration wankers, to community government and publishing. They're not alone. The neocon Phoenix New Times chain has just bought out the left-humanist Village Voice. Forcing out a moderate editor like Sturdivant, about as "dangerous" a character as John Kerry, because he wouldn't "stay on message," makes as much sense as Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby ratting out Valerie Plame.

John Lombardi was editor of the Chestnut Hill Local from April 2000 to Feb. 2001. If you would like to respond to this Slant or submit one of your own (750 words), e-mail duane@citypaper.net.