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 H. Brandt Ayers (Courtesy of the Anniston Star) 
 
 A prominent newspaper executive in Alabama accused of spanking multiple female employees during the 1970s has resigned. 
 
 H. Brandt Ayers, 82, on Thursday stepped down as chairman of the board of Consolidated Publishing Co., which owns the Anniston Star and five other newspapers. 
 
 “It is of utmost importance to me that this newspaper continue to serve its role of reporting on matters of concern to the Anniston community and that nothing stand in the way of preserving the newspaper as an independently owned publication serving this community,” Ayers wrote in a statement to the Anniston Star. “I feel my resignation at this time is in the best interests of the paper and its mission.” 
 
 On Tuesday, Ayers admitted to the Anniston Star that he spanked at least one female reporter in her home decades ago, claiming he was simply following a doctor’s advice. 
 
 He claimed the woman, who worked at the Star between 1973 and 1974, had been psychologically ill, and a doctor had suggested he “calm her down,” Ayers told the Star. When Ayers asked the doctor if spanking would work, the doctor said it would, Ayers said. Ayers told the Star he could not recall the name of the physician. 
 
 The Star named the woman who was spanked, saying she may now be deceased. The Washington Post does not name victims of sexual assault who have not gone public with their stories. 
 
 Ayers also acknowledged allegations from Star reporter Veronica Pike Kennedy, who spoke publicly to the Star, the Montgomery Advertiser and the Alabama Political Reporter, that the publisher spanked her 18 times with a ruler in the Star newsroom in 1975. When asked about the alleged assault, Ayers told the Anniston Star: “Let the accusation stand.” 
 
 “As a very young man with more authority than judgment, I did some things I regret,” Ayers told the Anniston Star. “At my advanced age I wish I could relive those days again, knowing the seriousness of my position and with the accumulated judgment that goes with age.” 
 
 Earlier in the week, Ayers said he had no intention of resigning. “Of course not,” Ayers told the Star. “I am the third generation of a family that has served honorably, even courageously, in the public interest.” 
 
 Ayers, who owns part of Consolidated Publishing, said Thursday he will no longer serve as a director, chairman or employee of the company. His wife, Josephine Ayers, who had served as the board’s vice chairwoman, will replace him as chairman. 
 
 The allegations against Ayers were first reported on the website Alabama Political Reporter and later described in articles in the Anniston Star and Montgomery Advertiser. 
 
 Kennedy told the three publications Ayers spanked her on a Saturday morning in February 1975, when the two of them were among a few employees in the Star newsroom. Kennedy was 22 at the time, and Ayers, then publisher, turned 40 that same year. 
 
 Ayers asked her to read an article he had written. After reading it, she told him it “really is a good piece of writing,” Kennedy recounted to the Montgomery Advertiser. Though she knew he had written the piece for an editorial, she joked, “Can you tell me who wrote it?” 
 
 “And he said, ‘Oh, you are being a bad girl,’ ” Kennedy told the Advertiser. “’You know what I do to bad girls? I spank them.’” 
 
 Kennedy said she then held onto her chair as Ayers “picked me and the chair up” and then “bent me across the desk behind me.” 
 
 He allegedly spanked her forcefully 18 times with a metal pica pole, a type of ruler used by newspaper designers and editors at the time. 
 
 “I was fighting him the whole time. Trying to kick him. Bite him. Scratch him. Whatever I could do,” Kennedy told Alabama Political Reporter. Then Ayers told her, “Well, that ought to teach you to not be a bad girl.” 
 
 Another Star reporter, Mike Stamler, then 22, said he witnessed the assault from across the room. 
 
 “I was staring with my mouth hanging open,” he told the Advertiser. “I was stunned.” 
 
 Kennedy didn’t know what to do, she told the Alabama Political Reporter. “I just had to pull myself together because I could lose my job.” She also feared how her father would react, she said. 
 
 “I knew I couldn’t say anything because my daddy would get his .38 and shoot Brandy in the head, and he’d be in prison for the rest of his life,” Kennedy told the Star, referring to Ayers by his nickname. 
 
 Ayers was described by the Star as “among the best-known figures in Anniston, and one of the best-known small-town newspapermen in the South.” He was the son of the Star’s founder, Harry Ayers, and replaced his father as publisher in the late 1960s. He stepped down in 2016 but still serves as the publishing company’s chairman. 
 
 Leading the Star during the civil rights era, he became known nationwide for his views as a Southern liberal. He advocated for school integration — a rare progressive voice in a conservative state. His syndicated column has been published in newspapers across Alabama. 
 
 A summary of one of his books, “Cussing Dixie, Loving Dixie: Fifty Years of Commentary by H. Brandt Ayers,” calls the newspaperman, “A loyal son of Alabama who extols Southern culture” and “unapologetically calls for Alabamians to cast off the moribund ideologies of the past.” 
 
 But in other writings, Ayers touched on the controversial topic of spanking. In his book “In Love with Defeat: The Making of a Southern Liberal,” Ayers wrote that in the 1940s, spanking “was as American and Southern as fried chicken on Sundays.” 
 
 He described a date with the woman who later became his wife, Josephine. At one point on the date, he became upset with her and “made a comment not calculated to endear me, ‘If I knew you better, I’d spank you.’ ” 
 
 Trisha O’Connor, a journalism professor who worked at the Star as a reporter and editor during the 1970s, told the Associated Press that stories of Ayers’s assaults on women were common knowledge in the newsroom at the time. She and other female employees at the newspaper would warn new female workers to avoid Ayers. 
 
 “We took it to upper management and said, ‘We need assistance. This is terrible,’ ” said O’Connor, who teaches at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C. “Basically, from what we were able to see, nothing happened.” 
 
 The allegations against Ayers first emerged in mid November, in an online column by Joey Kennedy in the Alabama Political Reporter, vaguely mentioning allegations involving his wife, Veronica Pike Kennedy, against a publisher. He didn’t initially mention Ayers by name. 
 
 Eddie Burkhalter, then a reporter at the Star, noticed the column and expressed interest in reporting on the story. Burkhalter claims the newspaper would not allow him to pursue the story about the allegations. In response, Burkhalter quit his job and reported the story for a different outlet, the Alabama Political Reporter. 
 
 Ben Cunningham, managing editor at the Star, wrote in a commentary that Burkhalter’s allegations about pursuit of the story are “flatly false.” Bob Davis, the current editor and publisher of the Star, wrote in a separate column that he instructed Cunningham to tell Burkhalter to suspend work on the story for a few days until they had a chance to discuss how they would go about treating anonymous sources. Burkhalter agreed to wait, Davis said, but later revealed that he had continued reporting anyway. 
 
 Then Burkhalter resigned and the Star assigned a new reporter to the story. The Star published its story shortly after the Alabama Political Reporter. On Tuesday, Burkhalter started work in a plumbing supply warehouse as a clerk. 
 
 “The airing of these allegations, in our pages and elsewhere, are a difficult time for this extended family,” Cunningham wrote. “For the women who say Ayers attacked them, though, I hope it leads to peace and to a sense of justice.” 
 
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 In a statement released to the Anniston Star, H. Brandt Ayers stepped down as chairman of Consolidated Publishing. This followed several days of reporting in multiple media outlets of allegations that Ayers spanked female reporters in the 1970s. 
 
 Ayers' statement reads: "It is of utmost importance to me that this newspaper continue to serve its role of reporting on matters of concern to the Anniston community and that nothing stand in the way of preserving the newspaper as an independently owned publication serving the community. I feel my resignation at this time is in the best interests of the paper and its mission." 
 
 The third generation of his family to own the paper, Ayers was publisher from the 1960s until 2016. Ayers no longer serves as director, chairman or employee of the company, effective immediately, the paper reported. 
 
 His wife, Josephine Ayers, will replace him as chairman. She had served as the board's vice chairman. As late as Tuesday, Ayers had said he had no intention of resigning. 
 
 "As a very young man with more authority than judgment, I did some things I regret," Ayers said in a statement earlier this week. "At my advanced age I wish I could relive those days again, knowing the seriousness of my position and with the accumulated judgment that goes with age." 
 
 Ayers, sometimes known as Brandy, occasionally wrote for the paper but, by some accounts, hasn't visited its newsroom in years and only maintained a connection with editors by e-mail. 
 
 'A fine place' 
 
 In the 1970s, the Star "was a fine place to begin a career," remembered Trish O'Connor, who maintains an advisory position at Coastal Carolina University. She covered City Hall and general assignments from 1972 through 1979. 
 
 Among Alabama's newspapers, the Anniston Star has long had the reputation as an incubator for young reporters looking to cut their teeth in community journalism. Independently owned and operated by the Ayers family, it also earned the ire of some for its unabashedly liberal stances on integration and progressive politics in the 1960s and 70s. The Star was the only Alabama paper to endorse George McGovern for president in 1972. 
 
 In those days, it had a stable of young reporters, perhaps a third of whom were female, learning the craft covering trials, small-town politics, crime and sports. 
 
 "It was a place where a lot of journalists have started out, learned to do quality journalism, and gone on to other things," O'Connor said. "Some people made lifelong careers, and others used those skills in other ways." 
 
 But there was a secret among some in the newsroom, some former reporters said - Brandy Ayers was known to spank female employees. 
 
 Tom Gordon, who later went on to work for the Birmingham News, was there from 1974 through 1981, eventually becoming a state editor. Though he said he never saw any incident involving Ayers, he heard about incidents and the concerns of his colleagues second-hand. 
 
 "It wasn't like when Brandy walked into the room, everybody cringed. You could talk with him," Gordon said. "You'd see him on a recurring basis- once a week, or more. He was not an ivory tower figure... It was just a closely held secret. It's just so weird, looking back on it. You wonder why you didn't do more." 
 
 Veronica Kennedy, then Veronica Pike, was the first woman to publicly say she was victimized by Ayers in an interview with former Anniston Star reporter Eddie Burkhalter and in subsequent published reports. 
 
 Kennedy told AL.com she was working at the time as a clerk on a Saturday shift making calls and taking obituaries while attending college. She said she had very little interaction with Ayers for the three-or-so years she had worked at the Star. She was just happy to be learning the craft of journalism. Saturdays usually saw very few reporters, and on this particular day, she said, there seemed to be no one else around. 
 
 Then Ayers came into the newsroom and asked her to read an editorial, what he called "some fine writing." After scanning the page, she jokingly asked him who wrote it. 
 
 According to her, he announced, "Oh, you're being a bad girl. I have to punish bad girls." Kennedy said she thought he was kidding, but as he approached her, she grabbed onto her chair. Ayers, she said, took a pica pole - a long, thin metallic ruler used in those days in newsrooms - wrestled her out of the chair, bent her over the desk and spanked her hard enough to leave marks. 
 
 He asked her how old she was, indicating he intended to strike her for each year. She said 18, hoping to get it over with faster. Kennedy was in her 20s, while Ayers was around 40. 
 
 Kennedy said she later learned she wasn't the first woman to experience this treatment. 
 
 "It took me a little while to process it," she said. "It hit me that this man only assaults young women who work at his newspaper. That's when I guess that I realized it was control, a sexual kind of control, as well as power over these women's future." 
 
 Kennedy said she was happy to learn Ayers had resigned, but called it "just a baby step" as the family is still in control of the company. 
 
 "I am not disappointed. I'm happy that at least there was some acknowledgement that these incidents occurred," she said. 
 
 Ayers seemed to confirm the incident with Kennedy in a statement he released to the Anniston Star this week, saying simply, "Let the accusation stand." 
 
 He released that statement while at the same time admitting that he spanked Wendy Sigal, a reporter from 1973 and 1974, in her own home. Ayers said he did so on the advice of a doctor. This story was confirmed by O'Connor, who heard the account from Sigal. According to O'Connor, Sigal, who was in her late 20s, said Ayers had "told her she had been a bad girl and she needed to be spanked -- and he spanked her." 
 
 Ayers claimed Sigal had been out of work because of a psychological ailment. Sigal apparently died in 2006. 
 
 Toward the end of an April 27, 2007 deposition in connection with an unrelated case, Ayers was asked under oath about Sigal, but not directly about any allegations regarding her. Instead, the questioning went to whether any employee had made a complaint that he had inappropriately touched them. 
 
 "Not formally, no," he said. 
 
 Informally? Came the next question. 
 
 "Possibly," Ayers responded. When asked when, Ayers replied, "Back in the dim ages. I've been there for forty years." He went on to say it was before the nineties, but no further questions were asked in relation. 
 
 'You misunderstood what happened yesterday' 
 
 Another former reporter, who asked not to be named due to the public nature of her current job, said she had just joined the Star staff after graduating from the University of Alabama in the fall of 1975. "The Star had a great reputation," she said. "It was just an honor to work there." 
 
 After about a month on the job, the woman said she missed covering a community improvement board meeting. Ayers called her to his office during the lunch hour the following day. 
 
 "You're going to have to be punished for that," she remembers him saying, in a forceful voice. 
 
 "He spanked me," she said. "I don't remember how many times, how long it lasted." She does not remember if it was with his bare hand. She described herself as crying, humiliated and upset. She says Ayers then told her to go into his private bathroom and clean herself up before she left - which she interpreted to mean to collect her emotions. 
 
 The former reporter said she told her boyfriend at the time, whom she later married, and another coworker. Word got back to a supervisor, and she was told a day later to go back to Ayers' office. He then told her, "You misunderstood what happened yesterday." There was no further explanation. 
 
 The woman said, at the time, she considered the incident to be assault, but not sexual. She mulled over going to the authorities but knew that Ayers was a prominent figure in the community. It was years before she told any family members, and only within the last months she told her children. 
 
 "I led a pretty sheltered childhood," she said. "I didn't know people got sexual gratification from things like that. It didn't cross my mind that it was a sexual thing, until other people started saying things." Later, when she received an unfavorable employee evaluation, she told her supervisors, "Considering what happened to me, I hope you'll take that into consideration." 
 
 "They knew what had happened," she said. Despite that, she felt the staff was "like a family" who were looking out for her. 
 
 One of them was Pat Guy, a reporter who worked at the Star from 1973 to 1977. She remembered hearing the woman's story and speaking with other female reporters at the time about it. To her, there was no doubt that Ayers' actions were sexual in nature. 
 
 "I didn't have any doubt about that," she said. "I definitely saw it as some kind of fetish. I didn't want to be alone with him." 
 
 However, it was infrequent, most agreed. Gordon remembered meetings with reporters in Ayers' office asking for accommodations on pay and overtime, but no mention was made of any grievances over his conduct in the newsroom. 
 
 O'Connor said some female reporters went to the paper's managing editor and executive editor for relief. "We had conversations with both of them," she said. "We said, 'This is a terrible situation. We need your help.'" But no action came as a result. 
 
 Instead, female reporters would informally tell new hires to watch out for the publisher. 
 
 "It was along the lines of 'be aware that this has happened in the past,'" O'Connor said. "If you're called to his office, take an editor along with you." 
 
 Gordon said word eventually made it to other newspapers, though not into the community. Two former Star employees said warnings were still being issued to female reporters in the late 1980s to remain seated at their desks if Ayers walked into the room. One media professional, Laura Axelrod, who relocated to Alabama in 2006, said she was warned several times not to seek a job at the Anniston Star "because of what happened to women." And O'Connor said Star alumni would stay in touch and occasionally relate that "it had happened again." 
 
 'The story is the story' 
 
 But since this story involves a newspaper, the story of how the story got initially told has become part of its telling. 
 
 Eddie Burkhalter, a 43-year-old with two stints of reporting at the Star totaling eight years, read a Thursday, Nov. 16, 2017 column in the Alabama Political Reporter written by Joey Kennedy. In it, Kennedy told how his wife Veronica said she was assaulted on her first job in journalism by the publisher at her Alabama newspaper, which was unnamed. The publisher "liked to spank his women employees," he wrote. 
 
 Burkhalter the following day told the Star's managing editor, Ben Cunningham, about the column and the fact that he had confirmed Kennedy was talking about the Star's former publisher. 
 
 Within a day, Burkhalter said, he was confident from talking to sources that "the allegations were most likely true." Before this, Burkhalter said he had never heard any stories involving Ayers or spankings. Talking to former newsroom employees, they were shocked to learn Burkhalter didn't know the stories. 
 
 He said Cunningham was initially receptive to pursuing the story. However, after a conversation with Star Publisher Bob Davis, Burkhalter said, Cunningham told him to gather names but not to contact them. Burkhalter said it was clear to him from the conversation that Davis "didn't want this story going anywhere." 
 
 "I've heard their explanations," Burkhalter said. "They're all bunk. I never believed them. I knew the truth when I saw Ben's face. He hung his head down. Do I understand it? Yes. It could have cost them their jobs." 
 
 Cunningham, in a pair of columns and an interview with AL.com, said Kennedy's piece was the first time he had heard any allegations regarding Ayers' conduct toward women in the workplace. Cunningham began working at the Star as an intern in 2002 and full-time in 2003. Star Publisher Bob Davis stated in his own column he had never heard any allegations in 14 years with Consolidated Publishing. 
 
 "The first thing I want to say is that it hurts to know that someone so closely identified with the institution I've spent my entire career with hurt people in the way (Ayers) did. I hurt for those people," Cunningham said. 
 
 Burkhalter said he told Cunningham and Davis that he would write the story and publish it elsewhere if he had to. According to Cunningham, Burkhalter violated an agreement the two had by continuing to talk to potential sources over the weekend before they'd had a chance to discuss how to proceed with the story. 
 
 Since Jan. 1, Cunningham published a column recounting the events of Burkhalter's resignation. Burkhalter, in a series of tweets Tuesday night, recounted his side, and Cunningham said the tweets accurately recounted their sometimes-heated conversations. Cunningham said he and Davis had considered reprimanding Burkhalter because he had continued to talk to sources before they'd had a chance to discuss the story. Instead, Burkhalter resigned. 
 
 Burkhalter, who typically covered the City of Anniston for the Star before he left, says he would have been happy not writing the story as long as it was covered. "We needed to be an example of great journalism, and this is how you do it," he said. "It wasn't about me being the one to do the story." 
 
 In a Jan. 2 column, Davis explained, "We hadn't yet had a chance to review how we would go about treating sources who wished to remain anonymous and inquiring into events alleged to have happened more than 40 years ago." The Anniston Star typically does not name people accused of sex crimes unless they are convicted in court. 
 
 However, Burkhalter said that explanation ignores the fact that the Star has named public figures who were accused of sex crimes. In September 2017, for example, the Star identified an Anniston High School teacher arrested for second degree sexual abuse. 
 
 Cunningham says the Star would have proceeded with reporting the story, regardless of how the editors' meeting with Burkhalter had gone. 
 
 "We were never not reporting the story," he said. "All I ever did was work to get this story in our paper. I was not able to do that at the speed that Eddie might have liked. But that's what I was trying to do." 
 
 The paper continued to gather information and published its story after Burkhalter's work appeared in the Alabama Political Reporter on Jan. 1. The Montgomery Advertiser also published a story reporting the allegations. The next day, Burkhalter went to work for a plumbing supply company in Anniston. 
 
 He said he has had offers to continue in journalism, but they would involve uprooting his family. He regrets that the way the story has come out has, in some ways, overshadowed the victim's stories. He also grows emotional when talking about his former colleagues and how it has affected their livelihoods. 
 
 Cunningham says it hurts to have "needlessly" lost Burkhalter from the Star staff, someone he considered a friend and "someone whose work I was proud to have been involved with editing." 
 
 The Star has announced it is instituting a new policy regarding workplace harassment. And Cunningham said the Star is continuing to report the story. 
 
 "The story is the story and we'll go where it takes us," he said. "That's not to say we don't get emotional about the things we've uncovered. This is what you do as a professional. You treat your own institution as you do the institutions you cover on a regular basis." 
 
 Sandy Davidson, a professor of media law at the University of Missouri, said the phenomenon of a media outlet, in this case a newspaper, reporting on itself is unfortunately becoming more common. The rise of the #MeToo phenomenon, focusing attention on sexual harassment and sexual assault claims and their victims, has affected many high-profile media figures in recent months. 
 
 "How hard has it been for Fox News, for NBC News, to report it," she said. "You can't really ignore the story. If you're going to be covering this story, you have to do it as straightforwardly as you can, given the circumstances. I think we're getting more and more models out there of how to do it. 
 
 "There's a grieving process, she said. "But still there's an obligation to covering it. You can't force a newspaper to publish what it doesn't want to publish. But you're talking more about public perception. It's difficult." 
 
 This story was edited to include material from an interview with a source on Jan. 5 at 1:25 p.m.
– Following accusations from multiple women that he spanked them when they were reporters in the 1970s, the former publisher of an Alabama newspaper has resigned from his position at the head of the company started by his grandfather, AL.com reports. According to the Washington Post, 82-year-old H. Brandt Ayers on Thursday stepped down as chairman of Consolidated Publishing, which owns the Anniston Star and five other newspapers. "It is of utmost importance to me that this newspaper continue to serve its role of reporting on matters of concern to the Anniston community and that nothing stand in the way of preserving the newspaper as an independently owned publication serving the community," Ayers says in a statement released to the Star. Ayers, who served as publisher of the Star until 2016, admitted earlier this week to spanking a female reporter at her home in the 70s. He claims he was following a doctor's advice to "calm her down" regarding her psychological illness. Another former reporter, Veronica Kennedy, says Ayers spanked her with a metallic ruler after pulling her from her chair in the newsroom. Ayers has said to "let the accusation stand." A third woman has also accused Ayers of spanking her. Kennedy says she's "happy that at least there was some acknowledgement that these incidents occurred." Though she says Ayers' resignation is "just a baby step," as his family will remain in control of Consolidated Publishing. Ayers' wife is replacing him as chairman.