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Steve Greenberg in the Ventura County Star nails the Santa Barbara News-Press situation. Link.
Up on State Street, meanwhile, sports editor Gerry Spratt has also resigned from the News-Press (that makes seven top staffers to go.) The paper ran an editor's note calling it all a difference of opinion about direction. More than two dozen remaining reporters and other staffers met off premises and apparently decided to keep putting out the News-Press despite the unethical dictates of billionaire owner Wendy McCaw and her new publisher, Travis Armstrong.
At Scott Kaufer's gathering of media types last night at Yamashiro, it was widely assumed that the New York Times and national magazines will now be parachuting into town to finally do the Wendy McCaw story. She has previously been represented by image fixers Sitrick and Company — might be time for her to reactivate the account. Meanwhile, I learned that even before her editors resigned en masse over McCaw's meddling with the news she discussed and perhaps offered the top job to former Santa Barbara Magazine (and Distinction) editor Holly Palance. Also: time to update the photo of McCaw (from the media blog at the Santa Barbara Independent, where writer Nick Welsh is all over the story.)
Thursday's report: Media massacre in Santa Barbara
Photo: Santa Barbara Independent Removed at request of photographer