‘Santa Barbara News-Press’ Online Assets to Be Sold

Bankruptcy Sale for $250,000 Subject to Bids in April

U.S. Bankruptcy Court | Credit: Jackson Friedman

For $250,000, ownership of the Santa Barbara News-Press online archive, and its various domain names, may be sold to Weyaweya Ltd., a company based on the island nation of Malta off the coast of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea.

While the bankruptcy attorneys did not answer questions about the Maltese company, in their motion to sell the online assets, they also requested payment to two former News-Press employees who held the content and the login information.

At one time, Santa Barbara’s 150-year-old daily had 50 reporters in its newsroom, the only large printing press in the area, and thousands of subscribers. After Wendy McCaw bought the newspaper in 2000 from the New York Times, feuds between owner and editors brought plummeting public opinion and subscriptions, and by 2023, what staff was left moved from its historic headquarters next door to Santa Barbara City Hall to its printing press building in Goleta. It was left to managing editor Dave Mason to announce in an email that McCaw had declared Chapter 7 on July 21, 2023, and that their paychecks would arrive after the bankruptcy was finalized.

Since then, Philip Kiner has preserved the website and its contents, the document states. That’s cost him money, for which he’s asked reimbursement, as well as payment of his proof of claim, for a total of $4,560.80.

The second employee is Yolanda Apodaca, who had the News-Press, or “Debtor,” account books and records, as well as the logins for the website. Apodaca asserted the logons were not the property of the bankruptcy estate — “possibly because the policy of the Debtor required Apodaca to use her personal funds to pay for the Debtor’s domain names and then seek reimbursement from the Debtor,” the attorneys surmise — and wanted $9,513.09, which is half her proof of claim and two weeks’ pay, for the login information.

Weyaweya submitted the “highest and best offer the Trustee has received,” but bidding will be allowed at the hearing, to start at $260,000 and in $5,000 increments thereafter. The property to be sold includes “the domain names newspress.com and sbnewspress.com; the content of the Debtor’s website; the Debtor’s social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter (n/k/a X); and the registered mark Santa Barbara News-Press.”

The sale will take place on April 9 at 2 p.m. in Courtroom 210 before a Santa Barbara bankruptcy court judge.