Santa Barbara News-Press Autopsy Results: Death by Spite

DEATH BY 1,000 CUTS: Early this Sunday afternoon, I was endeavoring to take a fresh photograph of the Santa Barbara News-Press building in De la Guerra Plaza — a still-life of a dead newspaper — when I heard the sirens. The first to arrive was a big red city fire engine. Approximately 23 seconds later, an AMR ambulance arrived in hot pursuit. Both parked as close to the historic News-Press building as possible. Word had just leaked that Wendy P. McCaw, embattled owner of the News-Press, had just pulled the plug on Santa Barbara’s oldest paper — and one of the oldest in California — thus bringing to merciful conclusion the loudest and most self-inflicted death rattle in journalistic history. 

Were the paramedics on hand to save the News-Press from McCaw? No, it turns out a homeless man had either fallen off his bicycle or was being rescued from a drug overdose. A longtime owner of a nearby business was walking by and asked what was up. I explained McCaw had just declared bankruptcy. “Finally!” she exclaimed. 

I didn’t ask, but she could have been one of the many business owners who, in 2006, received letters from McCaw’s lawyer threatening to sue them if they didn’t take down a sign reading, “McCaw, Obey the Law.” These had sprouted up all over town when the paper was engulfed by internal strife from which it never recovered. 

At that time, newsroom workers had just voted 33-6 to affiliate with the Teamsters Union. McCaw, they claimed, was interfering in newsroom operations, attempting to slant the news to better protect her friends and to punish her enemies. McCaw, to the extent she ever spoke publicly, insisted she was merely trying to root out bias. When McCaw refused to recognize the union vote or bargain in good faith, the “Obey the Law” signs went up. The cease-and-desist letters from McCaw’s legal squad soon followed. 

However you slice it, it was not a good look. Newspaper owners are supposed to be in the business of protecting free speech, not threatening it.

Along the way, McCaw would sue me for my coverage of her newsroom’s meltdown. And stupidly, I left myself wide open. I had posted an article — without McCaw’s consent — written by a News-Press reporter, Scott Hadly, who later resigned in disgust over McCaw’s intrusions. His article never ran in McCaw’s paper. My decision to publish it in the Independent qualified as a trademark infringement. Ultimately, we settled. But along the way, her lawyers would demand I turn over my notes as part of discovery. Even though they were totally illegible — I could barely read them — I declined. It was the principle of the thing.

To be fair, her attorneys didn’t push that hard. In fact, they seemed embarrassed by what they were doing. Even so, it wasn’t a good look either. Newspaper owners are supposed to protect the sanctity of reporters’ sources, not attack them. That’s what big government does. But that was Wendy.

Wendy went out exactly the same way she came in — screwing her workers. The few remaining newsroom staff abruptly learned their jobs had just evaporated and that they would be compensated for any unpaid hours they’d accrued if and when the Chapter 7 proceedings had run their course. For McCaw — once upon a time a billionaire — the amount involved could be gleaned from her pocket lint. For her employees, I suspect, that money might make an immediate difference. 

It’s worth remembering that the very first time McCaw met with employees, after buying the News-Press from the New York Times on October 19, 2000, she notified them their pensions and 401K plans were a thing of the past and would no longer be contributed to. The proceeds saved, she explained, would go to fund employee bonuses. Minimum-wage laws, she wrote in an editorial, only added “counterfeit value” to labor. 

The mystery isn’t why McCaw pulled the plug on the News-Press. That was inevitable. She’d been doing it incrementally for more than 15 years. The mystery is, why now? The best guess anyone can come up with is — yet again — to screw her workers. 

Over the years, she’d been ordered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to make restitution to various newsroom workers she’d stiffed and short-changed to the tune of $2.2 million. Those payments have not been made, and substantial penalties and interest have accrued. McCaw runs a serious risk of being found in contempt for failure to pay. But if the News-Press no longer exists, then it can’t be forced to pay its workers. 

McCaw is one of those people who rails against the excesses of Big Government — she actually likened the waiting lines established at grocery stores during the height of the COVID pandemic for safety reasons to the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union — while engaging in the very behavior that makes necessary the Big Government protections she so rails against.

This is a sad and sordid ending to a tiresome tale that gives rich and imperious dilletantes everywhere a bad name. It’s sadder still when you ponder the massive impact the News-Press has had in shaping the fundamental DNA of what has come to be Santa Barbara. It was founded in 1932 when two previous papers with roots going back to the 1850s merged. 

At its helm was Thomas M. Storke, the publisher, editor, mogul, boss, potentate, and community kingpin. Without Storke, there would be no UCSB. Without Storke, there would be no Lake Cachuma, from which we draw about half our water supply. 

Under the leadership of McCaw — a die-hard vegetarian and animal rights activist — the News-Press editorialized that people should donate beans and rice to the poor for Thanksgiving dinner, instead of turkeys.

At least Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake.”