The ‘Santa Barbara News-Press’ to Rise from the Grave

NewsWell from Arizona State University Assumes Publisher Duties

Pictured after the successful acquisition of the "Santa Barbara News-Press" digital archives — which included the bankrupt newspaper's trademark, copyright, and website — are Ben Romo (right), his attorney Will Beall, and Will Belfiore, who helped expose the Malta company that had been angling to buy the rights. Romo and Jason Yardi have donated the website to Arizona State University's NewsWell nonprofit to resurrect the defunct site. | Credit: Courtesy

Proving there is life after death, the Santa Barbara News-Press is expected to begin publishing online again in the next several months. A press release from Ben Romo, whose team bought the trademark and digital archive of the bankrupt newspaper, announced on Wednesday that they were donating those assets to Arizona State University’s NewsWell nonprofit, which officially debuted the same day.

Romo said that he’d been searching for a way to revive the daily paper, but he had no interest or experience in running a paper. Neither did his financial backer, Jason Yardi, who brought housing to downtown State Street atop the former Sur La Table in his philanthropic work with Romo. Nor did they want to sell the News-Press to a for-profit entity.

“We both grew up reading the paper. We loved it as kids,” said Romo, who counts paperboy among his past jobs. “We’re a tiny example of the people who’ve cherished this institution, which helped shape and inform our community for more than a century.”

Their search for a publisher sent them to the National Trust for Local News, which has backed newspapers in Colorado, Georgia, and Maine, and to the Knight Foundation, which is underwriting NewsWell with a $5 million grant. Romo said they appreciated NewsWell’s professional credentials — it’s affiliated with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at ASU — and liked the unbiased professionalism of the journalists who ran the nonprofit.

The News-Press is the third newspaper for NewsWell — the Times of San Diego and Stocktonia joined NewsWell last year in a soft rollout. For the News-Press, however, NewsWell is starting from scratch as the paper ceased publication in July 2023.

“As we start to reassemble a team of journalists to serve Santa Barbara, we’re starting with a listening tour,” said Nicole Carroll, NewsWell’s executive director. She is a professor at the Cronkite school and won a Pulitzer in 2018 as part of an Arizona Republic team looking into the proposed border wall. “We’re asking groups and individuals, ‘What are the gaps in news and information?’” she said, adding that their goal was to add to and collaborate with media for the community.

At ASU, NewsWell has a business team that handles things like insurance and human relations, as well as websites, analytics, and newsletters. “Basic business services,” said Carroll. “Before starting NewsWell, in talking to reporters and editors across the country, they were all great on journalism but said they could use some help on the back end. We have that expertise and ability.”

Mi-Ai Parrish, part of NewsWell’s board at ASU and a director of media enterprise, said they were in California, rather than news deserts in the heartland, because so many of their students, professors, and alumni were here. Clancy Woods, a trustee for the Cronkite school and a UC Santa Barbara graduate, was among the serious bidders for the News-Press digital assets, which went to Romo’s group for $285,000 last April. Romo noted that they’d entered the bidding after learning from Will Belfiore and Zachary Grimshaw that the chief bidder for the website was a company in Malta, which was notorious for buying legacy media sites and turning them into zombie shells.

The listening tour would last about two months, Parrish said, after which they hoped to begin publication. “We want to be additive,” Parrish said. “Five, 10, 15 reporters are not enough for a place like Santa Barbara.”

True enough, but Santa Barbara has about a half-dozen weekly tabloids in English and Spanish that struggle to stay afloat; several websites dedicated to news, business, and real estate; and television and radio stations that cover community events and news. Santa Barbara saw a similar experiment in 2012 with Mission & State, a web-based media site that foundered in its third year for a number of reasons, donation issues among them, and was also funded by the Knight Foundation.

Carroll acknowledged that Santa Barbara might not be a news desert, but there are now fewer resources than before. “Communities deserve more local journalism,” she said. At the Stockton and San Diego websites, NewsWell’s means to fund additional reporters was a business model based one third each on philanthropy, subscriptions and donations, and digital advertising, Carroll explained.

Gwyn Lurie, editor and CEO of the Montecito Journal, agreed that Santa Barbara needed more journalism, not less. “If they’re serious about bringing real reporting to Santa Barbara, and they’re considering doing it on a daily basis, I consider that a positive thing,” Lurie said. “Santa Barbara lost something when they lost the News-Press, although not in its last iteration.”

The daily under publisher Wendy McCaw was the first to endorse Donald Trump in 2016, and under McCaw, the editorial page took a hard right turn from its previous conservative stance. The community became involved, however, after editors and reporters walked out or were fired in 2006 in an argument over directions about news reporting coming from the publisher’s suite. The result was the News-Press Meltdown, in which the community sided with the reporters they’d been reading for decades, canceling subscriptions and posting signs opposing McCaw.

By 2023, the paper was in bankruptcy, stating it had $500 in the bank. The court proceedings have dragged on since then. Most recently, the bankruptcy trustee filed a motion to bring into the company’s assets the iconic downtown building and the News-Press printing plant in Goleta. The attempt to claw back the real property, worth an estimated $31 million, is opposed by McCaw. The hearing on the matter has missed its court date monthly since October and is currently set for January 29.

Although NewsWell’s publishers are still hunting for questions to their answers, Romo said the intention was to have the News-Press be run by local editors, reporters, and staff. An advisory board would be established, which already counts among its members former News-Press executive editor Jerry Roberts, who received an ethics award from the Society of Professional Journalists — as did eight other employees — for quitting the paper rather than agree to kill stories at McCaw’s demand.

Romo took note of the extreme partisanship and divisiveness engulfing the country, saying that local news mattered more than ever.

“An unbiased free press is foundational to who we are as a country,” Romo said. “Even the U.S. Constitution calls it out.”