Wendy and the Widening Gyre

After Wendy McCaw destroyed the city’s daily paper, I read a number of posts that began the same way: “My first job was delivering newspapers for the Santa Barbara News-Press.” As if it were mere nostalgia, like a Leave It to Beaver rerun. On the other hand, most pro assessments I read described the paper’s demise only in terms of the horrible woman who strangled it. Hubris, narcissism, etcetera. And these inferred that the paper was a brilliant and precious memory, sorrowfully squandered, now gone.

But how much did the News-Press really mean to us and what have we lost?

A famously talented art photographer once got perturbed with me because I used an old joke in print, referring to the paper as the News-Suppress. “I used to deliver that paper” he said. “It was my first job.”

We all called it that, whether in jest or anger, even old timers who worked there. We believed it frequently hid things. The reputation for the News-Press to dim the truth dates back to the Now-Sanctified T.M. Storke himself, who had immense power and access to local information but only ran stories he believed would not harm his project of recreating Santa Barbara as a vision city rising from the one-room school cowtown he was born unto. And he did recreate it (a university, a lake) with the help of powerful friends and a newspaper that rough hewed the truth to desired ends, offering information and Fiesta-lite propaganda.

My friends mostly made fun of the paper’s utter blandness. The cute animals on front page B section and the unwillingness to court controversy; its boldest headlines reserved for rain — thrusting, pulverizing storms. News that was fit to print. It did offer depths, of course. Jobs for hard-working journalists, including a Religion Editor. World and local stories broke on Page One, though often culled from AP. The much-vaunted Pulitzer won for exposing local John Birch Society was impressive, and a short-lived golden age even dawned when the New York Times bought the paper. There were always reliable, popular aspects: City Council coverage, local sports, movie clocks and daily comics. Some S.B. columnists like Tom Kleveland, Beverley Jackson, Barney Brantingham, and the Pattons, father and son, were indispensable fountains of the lowdown. Marilyn McMahon, Jerry Cornfield, Michael Takeuchi, John Zant, Josef Woodard, and the late Russ Spencer were vital in their days as well. It was center right wing and rarely thrilling.

Ultimately, the News-Press crumbled because McCaw, in her solipsistic blundering made dumb political moves like pumping wildly for Trump and against immigrants in a liberal, informed University town. Her downfall began, though, when she meddled and muddied a story about Rob Lowe; the public’s right to know was outweighed by an urge to comfort a minor celebrity. And the final act of the newspaper was to suppress knowledge of its own doom from its own workers. A pathetic end, though tragic for those owed money. It was News-Suppress to the bitter end.

Nonetheless, we have lost a chunk of the past. There is the matter of the paper’s morgue and back issues. (Though, no doubt, the public library has those on microfiche.) What we all lost is part of our daily life. When I was young, even when Walter Cronkite ruled the living room and radio KIST covered emergencies (fires, earthquakes), the News-Press came out in Morning, Evening, and Late Street Editions every day. There was sometimes an Extra edition. People consumed it, and advertisers bought spots.

Perhaps more importantly, it was at the geographical heart of the town, De la Guerra Plaza; City Hall, the N-P, and De la Guerra Adobe in one green theme park where Fiesta had its most popular mercado. But it’s been years since the News-Press presses roared through the night. And the park is torn up, too. Our center did not hold.

I never delivered the paper, but my first published article, a book review, appeared in the News-Press Scene Magazine. My folks were proud. So it was kind of my first job. A journalism idealist, I ended up moving to the Santa Barbara News & Review and the Independent, away from the News-Press because it represented the ideas and aspirations of my parents’ generation and not mine. Most of us hoped that via the New York Times or the short blissful reign of editor Jerry Roberts it would grow up. At first, we even hoped McCaw would refresh it. Maybe new media is the secret culprit here, but Wendy McCaw annihilated all our hopes.

Nostalgia, perhaps, but I miss a daily paper. I miss De la Guerra Plaza, too. Maybe someday we will find another heart. But, despite the heroic work of its historic staff, it isn’t the News-Press that I want back.