One critic told me some of my Sunday columns were so bad they could make a grown man cry, but I never actually choked up anyone until Wednesday.

We held the grand opening for our new home in Camarillo. We dedicated our community room to one of the finest gentlemen in America — Paul K. Scripps — and, he was so touched, he needed a moment before he spoke.

Paul has a master's in manners (with a minor in humility) and a Ph.D. in long-term strategic vision. I used to attend meetings with him in the middle 1990s where I was dismissed as someone entranced by "fads" when I talked about the growth on the Internet. Paul was on my side, being one of those who saw it as something more than "reading the newspaper on a computer screen," as they used to say in 1995.

(Not that I'm bitter or anything.)

What I want to tell you today is the side of Paul Scripps that understands the "gestalt" of a community newspaper. The sum of a newspaper's parts is so much greater when it is considered as a whole.

The way he explained it to me: A newspaper starts with local content that draws local readers, which increases circulation, which leads to greater demand from advertisers to be in the newspaper, which leads to greater profit that can be enjoyed by owners and put back into making the newspaper's local content better.

His simple tenets and the advice he gave me when I took over as editor of The Star in 1995 were that managers should treat our employees as partners, and we should always respect and give back to the community.

I listened to Paul, not just because he was right, but because his dad, John P. Scripps, and a man named Roy David Pinkerton, started this newspaper in 1925. Talk about vision. They named the paper the "Ventura County Star" in a day when there was not much of a county.

As we began planning our new headquarters in Camarillo, we wanted to find a place for the community.

We designated a large room at the front of the building for free use by the county's nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits do much to make Ventura County a great place to live, but their budgets often are meager. They hold board meetings in space that is begged or borrowed or bought.

And as we configured a naming nomenclature for this place, we put names on the large rooms so they would be easy to identify. The room used by the editorial team most of the time is named for Julius Gius, our longtime editor. Pinkerton's name is on the room used mostly by advertising. Our nicest conference room is named the San Buenaventura Room to remind us of our roots.

The community room is named for Paul Scripps. He did not know it until we pulled back a cloth Wednesday revealing the plaque with his name and a paragraph of dedication. The eloquent Mr. Scripps was momentarily speechless, so I did what any good Irishman does; I kept talking until he was ready to speak. And, of course, he was brilliant.

The morning went on. We cut the ribbon after a false start. (I had invited college newspaper editors — Kelly Barnett of California Lutheran University and Ben Gallagher of California State University, Channel Islands — to be the symbolic future as we opened the doors, but the velvet ribbon proved a tough opponent.) Hundreds of people toured the place. Scores mingled outside.

Paul became the star at The Star. I tried to reach him for an hour, but there was a line of readers, community leaders and advertisers waiting to meet him.

Huge windows allowed the sun to brilliantly bathe our new home's Mediterranean colors — greens, blues and yellows. I looked over the dozens of partners at The Star, proudly filling in and greeting our visitors.

Paul's line finally dwindled. He politely declined an offer to have lunch, noting another cross-country trip he must take the next day for the Scripps Howard Foundation. Earnestly, he thanked me again for dedicating the room in his name and then quietly, without an escort or a trumpet, he walked to his vehicle and drove away.

He is gone for now, but the legacy of his family lives in this space.

— Tim Gallagher is publisher of The Star and can be reached at tgallagher@VenturaCountyStar.com.