Mark’s Soap Box

Santa Barbara, such an odd place. It’s natural beauty is marred by the ugliness of those who can afford to live there. It’s also home to a bizarre newspaper called the Santa Barbara News-Press that seems to mirror, if not in money at least in oddness the area it serves.

The News-Press is owned by Craig McCaw’s (of cellular fame) ex-wife, Wendy McCaw. She seems to believe that because she sucked her ex dry she is fit to run a newspaper. It’s not working out so well, btw.

You would think a paper that runs an Editorial on Thanksgiving against eating turkey would be a wonderful place for most journalists. You would be wrong.

Mrs McCaw is an animal “rights” loon, she is opposed to eating animals or using them as entertainment or learning if not in the wild. McCaw had helped to have Keiko of Free Willy fame returned to the wild. Keiko subsequently died barely a year after release. Ironically Keiko was getting as much help after release as before. The only difference is she/he/it whatever had to fend for itself. Hmm something else that is not working out so well that McCaw is involved with.

Funny how history repeats itself. First the whale, now the paper. Seem she has some “people issues”.

Mrs. McCaw has caused the town to become a 2 paper town. That is amazing in and of itself. Most cities don’t even have 2 papers, much less towns. So what caused all of this feather ruffling? Well arrogance, but mostly 2 stories.

The problems at the News-Press blew into the open after a dispute over two articles divided the newsroom. A routine article about a zoning battle involving a home that actor Rob Lowe wanted to build included the address of the site, prompting an angry response from the News-Press management, which insisted that listing the location was an intrusion on the actor’s privacy.

Now the address thing is just idiotic. Rob Lowe was planning a gate (fenced as well, 24 feet high) and was before the planning commission. If I am not mistaken anything discussed there is openly available and would not be a volition of his privacy, if published. He felt differently, and complained to McCaw.

She reprimanded her staff for the publication of the address, even though there was not a policy in place about addresses. This of course caused some ill will.This was followed by another incident that really set off the whiners at the paper.

And the paper’s management killed an article by a police reporter noting the DUI arrest of the News-Press’ editorial page editor and writer, Travis Armstrong.

Actually they ran one article about his arrest, but killed one about his pleading guilty.

Also, McCaw appointed Travis K. Armstrong publisher, who managed to accomplish the near impossible — he alienated nearly everyone, not just in the newsroom, but in the city.

So, when Armstrong was nabbed for a DUI there was considerable glee in writing it up for the News-Press. However, a subsequent story about how he pled guilty and the penalty was spiked. This caused more upset.

The staff did not like Armstrong, and had the long knives out anyway. So much for journalistic integrity. They wanted to skewer him, and were a little upset that they did not get the chance to do it.

Infuriated, the paper’s editor, Jerry Roberts (a former editor at The Chronicle), and a handful of other editors and reporters walked out. Staff members have continued to trickle out the door since then, all of it covered in the Daily Sound, the Independent and local blogs.

The Daily Sound being the second paper in the area that was not much more than a weekly freebie at the time. And then this…

[fall of 2006] the remaining News-Press staff voted 33-6 to be represented by the Teamsters Union. The News-Press filed an objection with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that the union used coercive tactics. That was rejected on Friday, though the management said it is considering an appeal.

Agnes Huff, a spokeswoman for the News-Press, said the management was disappointed by the vote but blamed the union and it supporters for spreading ill will.

Geez, even the Union is getting involved, someone is not happy. Then again, they are liberals, and love Unions.

So anyway the News-Press is in a pickle. They have this new start up, and they don’t like it. Staff are defecting or talking Union, and the owner is roundly despised. So what do you do? go on the offensive against the non-problem. The competition.

The News-Press sucked up the domain names for the Daily Breeze and then sent a threatening letter to the Publisher. Fear is a stinky cologne. I think some are scared.

He [Gordon] got a break when the News-Press appeared to try to halt the Daily Sound’s progress. First, the News-Press acquired the Web domains using the Daily Sound name, forcing Gordon to abandon the newspaper’s name online.

Then, he received a letter from David Millstein, a San Francisco lawyer for the News-Press, claiming that the Daily Sound’s banner looked too much like the News-Press’ and that it had to be changed. Gordon said that not only did the News-Press attorney demand a change in the look of the Daily Sound banner, but asked that it consider a name change, perhaps to the Los Angeles Daily Sound

Gordon is the publisher of the Daily Sound. Oh and he is 24, and not well capitalized. However when the most hated women in Santa Barbara is attacking you, you get good press.

Whatever the truth, stories about the News-Press’ efforts circulated widely and enhanced the Daily Sound’s scrappy reputation. Gordon said he hopes to expand the Daily Sound to 32 pages by February, to distribute 10,000 copies a day and to break even financially.

Circulation is up, and even the media in the Bay area is enjoying this little brouhaha.

So why is she hated? Well let’s start with her attitude about “her beach”.

The land belongs to McCaw. The beach, as all California beaches do, belongs to the public. McCaw, citing her rights as a private citizen, doesn’t want other private citizens walking along the far edge of her property to get to their property. McCaw’s problem is that her land came with an easement that allows the public to walk along the far edge of her property, under the bluffs. About 20 years ago, the land’s previous owner made that deal with the county so she could build a sunroom for the guesthouse. McCaw claims the previous owner was unconstitutionally pressured into the deal. The courts, so far, aren’t bothering with the constitutionality of the easement since it’s 20 years old and it’s only possible to appeal it within 180 days. In short, the Second Appellate District court in Ventura told McCaw to take a flying leap and to pay for the Coastal Commission’s and the County’s legal bills.

Guess she can only find divorce lawyers. So what is her beef, anyway?

Ha! It’s nice to think that members of the public can still get to their beach, which, as McCaw can attest, is quite beautiful, but it’s even nicer to think that every one who sets foot below her bluffs is annoying the billionaire. After all, McCaw sued to keep people off the public beach next to her one-eighth-the-size-of-Isla-Vista fiefdom and had the temerity to say she was fighting the little guy’s battle against big government.

Well that does tend to get people a bit hacked off.

Last but not least is the attack upon her former Editor. She has accused John Roberts [publisher of UCSB paper] of having Child Porn on his computer. Yep, even the NYT took notice of that one. Most likely because they sold the paper to McCaw. Oh you thought that was weird. Try this:

But the latest twist took the antagonisms even further. In the article on Sunday, which carried no byline, the newspaper wrote that Ampersand Publishing, the parent company of The News-Press, was seeking to retrieve from police the hard drive of the computer used by Mr. Roberts, “which contains according to the police more than 15,000 images of child and adult pornography.”

The article noted that the city opposed the newspaper’s attempts to obtain the hard drive, and that the district attorney had declined to file charges after a police investigation. It added that Ampersand “is conducting its own internal investigation to determine the source of the material.”

Holy cow! FIFTEEN THOUSAND? Most porn sites don’t have that many.

In a letter dated March 2, the district attorney’s chief trial deputy, Eric A. Hanson, wrote that there was no basis for filing charges over the pornography, since the computer was used by several people at The News-Press. “At the present time there is insufficient evidence to warrant bringing charges against any individual,” the letter stated.

So the DA is not prosecuting and they won’t give the computer back? Something is amiss here.

Mr. Roberts held a news conference on Sunday to refute the suggestion that the illegal material was his. “It is false, defamatory, malicious and was published in full knowledge that it was untrue,” he said in an interview afterward. “It was a cowardly attack, unsigned, and not preceded by any attempt to contact me for comment.”

Now I generally look at press people as being out of touch and pampered brats. So my dog in this fight should be McCaw. However she is such an ugly bitch that I just find it hard to side with her. Then you get the enviro-nuts who demand beach access through everyone’s yard attacking her, and it’s even more confusing. This on top of the NRLB attacking, and…. oh my head hurts.

The most bizarre act so far is this one:

“LOS ANGELES — Six journalists have been fired from the Santa Barbara News-Press for placing a sign over a freeway overpass urging people to cancel their subscriptions, an attorney for the newspaper said.

“They are trying to injure and disparage the company,” Cappello said. “People who want to engage in conduct that harms the newspaper … will not remain.”

The six are saying they were fired illegally. Yea right.

Just more proof that California, is the Nut capital of the world.

So anyway it’s been bad news all around. Seven resignations in March. Now the NLRB is going after the News-Press. Guess we caught all the terrorists, so Blonde Bimbos who own papers are fair game now. Some would say McCaw is a terrorist.

Newsroom revolts are not unknown, but McCaw’s fascinating little jihad against her staff involved strange twists from the start. When News-Press editor Roberts and a slew of his allies quit July 7, McCaw refused to cut short a Mediterranean cruise on her yacht with show-biz royalty Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas. And the internal beefs News-Press journalists had regarding McCaw and her newly appointed co-publishers hit a flash point when actor Rob Lowe complained to his good friend McCaw that the address of his planned Montecito mansion was printed in the News-Press. (The address had already been broadcast on a TV news report and during a televised community hearing.)

McCaw’s lawyers see this as toadyism.

McCaw lawyer A. Barry Cappello said in a phone interview that McCaw is just trying to protect her rights as an owner, and journalists who’ve covered the story are, in effect, toadies who “just don’t want to be viewed as favoring a publisher over a journalist [Roberts].”

Well he may be correct on that, however she is not without fault. You see the reason I am writing this is that I saw a 2 inch throwaway section on a lawsuit in the OC Register. Yep, it’s about McCaw.

In one of many unusual developments, McCaw is targeting a journalism professor who wrote about her for American Journalism Review, having hired attorney Stanton “Larry” Stein, a well-known Santa Monica entertainment litigator whose yearly billings, according to the Daily Journal, exceeded $10 million in 2002, and who styles himself an advocate of entertainment workers taking on studios over employment contracts and profit participation.

Stein’s donated work on First Amendment cases earned him the American Civil Liberties Union’s award as the 2004 Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year in Southern California. Yet on December 12, First Amendment advocate Stein, on behalf of McCaw’s News-Press, filed a vituperative 17-page defamation and libel complaint against obscure journalism professor Susan Paterno, of Chapman University in Orange County, for writing “Santa Barbara Smackdown,” an extensive recounting of the News-Press newsroom revolt for American Journalism Review.

You can read “Santa Barbara Smackdown” here at the AJR. It’s very interesting. I especially like the part about how she is sleeping with her Restaurant critic, and he became co-publisher. Even funnier is that she sees this as actionable in court. Geez.

Life in Cali.

Technorati tags: Craig McCaw, Wendy McCaw, Susan Paterno, John Roberts, news-press, newspaper, Santa Barbara, Daily Breeze, libel, slander, Newspaper, New York Times