Santa Barbara News-Press bankruptcy brings uneasy end to an owner's bitter tenure
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — This city of red-tile roofs, temperate breezes and coastal charm has long glimmered as one of those exceptional California places.
Its natural beauty attracts a literate and engaged population, and its residents, at least from afar, seem unduly blessed with fine weather, prosperity and more than a dose of the good life.
That good fortune appeared to shine on Santa Barbara in 2000, when one of the state's richest women bought The Santa Barbara News-Press, a venerable newspaper that at the time had been at the heart of the city's public life for more than 130 years. Santa Barbarans cheered at the notion of having a local in charge after more than a decade under the ownership of The New York Times Co. They saw in Wendy McCaw an owner with the financial resources (once pegged by Forbes at $1.5 billion) to ensure long-term viability of the Pulitzer Prize-winning news outlet. And they liked what they knew of her politics: environmentalist; champion of wildlife. McCaw seemed in step with the liberal-leaning beach and university community.
The reports of a match made in heaven proved greatly exaggerated. Within a few years, McCaw's relationship with newsroom leaders — and then with many readers — began to crumble. of top editors in 2006 unleashed what would become a slow-motion unraveling of the newspaper
