168-year-old California newspaper files for bankruptcy, lays off all staff

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

After more than 150 years of publishing, the Santa Barbara News-Press filed for bankruptcy in a Chapter 7 filing by its parent company Ampersand Publishing on Friday, court records showed.

The newspaper’s managing editor Dave Mason alerted staff that the news operation is shutting down and all jobs are being eliminated in an email, Noozhawk, the first to report on the shutdown, said.

Three months ago, the News-Press moved from its building on Santa Barbara’s De La Guerra Plaza to a space at its Goleta printing plant; last month, the paper stopped its print version and began to only offer news online, the Santa Barbara Independent said.

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/santa-barbara-news-press-files-for-bankruptcy-18258053.php

On its Twitter page, the News-Press says it was founded in 1855 and is “Southern California’s oldest newspaper.” The paper changed hands several time over the years. One of the most well-remembered owners was Thomas M. Storke; under his leadership the paper won a Pulitzer Prize in 1962. The New York Times acquired the paper in 1985 and famously sold it to local billionaire Wendy McCaw, the current owner, in 2000. McCaw is the ex-wife of cellphone pioneer Craig McCaw, the former chair of McCaw Cellular, which was sold to AT&T for billions. The McCaws are believed to have had one of the most expensive divorces in the U.S. ever.

[Hekate]

1. Well, damn. It took Wendy a lot longer than I thought it would to run the News Press into the ground

She seemed to have taken it up as a hobby, but got rid of a bunch of good people, took revenge on others — it was bad.

Not that it was my favorite newspaper, but you have to have a source for local news. However, like a lot of locals, I quit subscribing for good when Barney Brantingham, who was kind of an elder statesman at the paper, went on tv and said he was resigning and counted the reasons why. I decided the weekly SB Independent was doing quite a good job.

What a shame.

[True Dough]

2. At least

"Noozhawk" was around to report this. Surely they report all the "nooz" you can "yooz."

[True Dough]

3. Oh, and in a world where newspapers are collapsing left, right and center

some positive news out of Britain (although some may argue that the Telegraph is not worth the printed on):

Link to tweet

Britain's Telegraph reports rise in subscriptions and earnings

http://reut.rs/43zSDTK

[niyad]

4. I was just commenting to someone the other day that it continues to

astonish me that, even as print papers are folding all around the country, the local reichwing fishwrap is still here. Another one bites the dust!

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

5. print papers (NYT, WP, LAtimes, Boston Globe) do the heavy lifting, i.e. research journalism

dailymail, ny post and the other RW rags, simply take that research and spin it, rewrite it with grammatical errors and spit it out.

[niyad]

8. The local fishwrap barely even does that. Interesting that even when they

are trying to give it away at my supermarket during their promos, there are almost no takers. Our local alternative paper at least does a decent job on local issues.

[swong19104]

6. Apparently, the SB News-Press

was one of 6 newspapers to have endorsed Trump in 2016. That was mostly under Wendy McCaw's direction.

Good riddance, I suppose.

[Hekate]

7. It was all Billionaire Wendy, dilettante newspaper owner. It did not have to end this way.

Back in the long, long-ago, the SBNP’s Republican then-owner did quite a spread on the John Birch Society, exposing them for the extremists they were. That took guts — that was some real journalism.

As I mentioned, my former town has an excellent weekly — and there is also the online Noozhawk, which I understand is pretty good. But Rachel Maddow is right — the continuing demise of the local American daily paper is a bad thing.