‘Santa Barbara News-Press’ Archives Languish Amid Decay

A strange salad of chopped carrots, corn, and tuna lay confettied across the entrance to the Santa Barbara News-Press on Friday, when bankruptcy trustee Jerry Namba opened the doors for potential bidders. They stepped over the discarded food to view what treasures might remain inside the abandoned building. That is, if Namba could find the right keys.

About a dozen people representing a half-dozen organizations walked into the dark building. Among them were the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, UCSB’s Special Collections Library, and Ben Romo’s NP 2024 LLC, which had won the online archive auction in April. Once the center of a journalism powerhouse, the historic building on De la Guerra Plaza was a rotting shell of its former self. The dank odor of mold permeated the building. Amoeba-shaped water stains browned the ceiling tiles.

The storied newspaper ran its last article on July 21, 2023. The small number of remaining staff received an email letting them know that Ampersand Publishing, owned by billionaire Wendy McCaw, had filed for bankruptcy. They would receive their paychecks once the courts had approved the bankruptcy, the email said. Ampersand claimed poverty, so this bankruptcy auction is a way to pay creditors.

The paper had stayed afloat despite 15 years of community acrimony over publisher McCaw’s interference with news stories, the firings of editors and reporters, and the resignation of admired editor-in-chief Jerry Roberts. Many other staffers protested or quit rather than be told which facts they could print. Many longtime readers canceled their subscriptions.

With the auction of the newspaper’s assets coming up, this group wanted to see what they’d be bidding on, particularly the paper’s archives that cover more than 100 years of Santa Barbara history. The electricity was off; creditor SoCal Edison is owed $176,000. The visitors flicked on their headlamps and flashlights, following Dacia Harwood and Chris Ervin of the Historical Museum up the stairs. They’d visited before and led the way to the clippings room. 

The rolling steel shelves were choked with manila envelopes and folders holding articles and photographs. The microfiche of decades past gave off the smell of vinegar. Stacks of fallen plaster formed hillocks on the floor.

The large, empty newsroom gave some relief from the smell. Shortly before the bankruptcy, the staff had been moved out of this iconic building and into its printing press plant in Goleta, leaving behind file cabinets, metal desks, office chairs, pyres of paper, the Independent’s 2023 beer issue.

As Namba wrestled with a tiny box of keys, the archivists found more clippings in stacked boxes and metal cabinets in the attic. “Drilling Offshore State,” read one label. Photographers’ names were scrawled on boxes along the wall. Accounts and Payroll. Testimony and exhibits from lawsuits.

In the third-floor tower space, Namba unlocked the archive of bound volumes. This was the treasure that everyone was looking for.

What a sad mess.

Housed within uninsulated concrete walls, books holding newspapers dating to 1870 slumped against one another. Printed on their mold-stained spines were the names of the paper’s previous incarnations or its holdings: The Daily Press, The Daily News, Weekly Press, Morning Press, Daily Independent, Daily News & Independent, Santa Maria Courier, News-Press. 

There it was, the daily history of Santa Barbara — earthquakes, Fiestas, depressions, world wars, oil spills, marriages, deaths — torn, wrinkled, broken, dirty, damp. Someone moaned, “Oh, man.”

Back downstairs in the fresh air, Namba explained he would accept bids for all the assets until the end of next week. Highest bidder take all — even the stuff still unseen behind locked doors. Bankruptcy Judge Ronald A. Clifford III had given the estate until September to get the viewing, bidding, and auction done. 

Namba said October was more likely as the judge is going on vacation.

One bidder mentioned the need for respirator masks. Another asked if the elevator would be working by then.

A poignant relic of the tour was outside the office of founding publisher TM Storke. On the wall hung a framed copy of one of his paper’s Pulitzer-winning editorials. The News-Press had exposed a secretive white supremacy group with powerful members known as the John Birch Society. Storke printed the editorials on his front pages in 1961, charging that the group was creating “dissention and animosity in this community of my birth.” Upon accepting the prize at age 85, he wrote, “But what I and the News-Press did are only what any good American newspaper would have done under the same circumstances.”

How things have changed.

[Update: Aug. 21, 2024] An email from bankruptcy trustee Jerry Namba today updated some auction information: A date of September 10 is set for a motion to authorize the auction and hire the auctioneer. The motion, filed yesterday, states that two sets of items are up for sale: the physical archive downtown, the subject of the tour; and everything at the Goleta plant, listed as warehouse equipment, vehicles, tools, works of art, the press, rolls of paper, and so on. The Goleta assets will go to the gavel most likely on October 1. The physical archive auction will likely be held on another date in October, clarified attorney Eric Israel, who is representing the trustee.