Santa Barbara’s New ‘Current’

Jim Buckley, founder and former editor of the Montecito Journal, opened a new publication called the Santa Barbara Current on November 15. The blog-style website will address “libertarian, conservative, and (dare I say?) common-sense bent” readers, Buckley wrote in an introductory email. 

The publisher is Russia stocks analyst James Fenkner, who has contributed an article on the 1978 Jonestown deaths. Fenkner came to public attention when he battled a group hired by the Santa Barbara Unified School District for racial sensitivity training, which Fenkner’s group viewed as overly “woke” anti-bias training.

Buckley stated the blog will feature former Santa Barbara News-Press columnists as well as frequent and rotating contributors. The new website creates a platform for conservative discourse in the void left by the bankruptcy of the daily paper in July.

The website currently consists of columns, with Buckley authoring “Purely Political,” which covers politics, travel, food, and the human condition through a libertarian lens. The publication has recreated Buckley’s Letters to the Editor section of the Montecito Journal, in which his flippant replies to readers was a popular part of the paper.

To date, contributors to S.B. Current, not to be confused with UC Santa Barbara’s media organ The Current, include well-known conservatives Andy Caldwell, the director of the Coalition for Labor, Agriculture & Business; and Christy Lozano, who ran for school board and superintendent on a conservative platform. Longtime Santa Barbaran Bonnie Donovan reprises her “Did You Know?” column from the News-Press.