Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Gritty struggle between workers and the owner at the daily newspaper in ritzy-ditsy Santa Barbara, California: Pearl-wearing heiress Wendy McCaw, who bought the paper six years ago, recently began meddling in the news coverage, and for once, the journalists jeopardized their paychecks by pushing back.

McCaw reportedly ordered that advertisers be treated nicely, while suppressing unpleasant news. In response, all six top editors quit. So did an investigative reporter and the newspaper’s longtime columnist.

The ex-columnist, Barney Brantingham, writes in the Santa Barbara Independent weekly:

I quit the Santa Barbara News-Press last week after more than 46 years because I couldn’t bear to watch the destruction of a fine newspaper. And it was too painful to see the destruction of the lives of dedicated staffers whose only crime was publishing the news. And I could not continue to work at a paper that had lost its credibility and its soul.

That’s what columnists are for — hearts on their sleeves. Meanwhile, the mess has attracted the attention of scavenger journalists from bigger newspapers including the Los Angeles Times; the New York Times and Vanity Fair magazine are said to be circling overhead.

The LA Times has a good summation and reports:

Acquaintances said they believed McCaw, 55, was in the Mediterranean, where she normally spends her birthday cruising on her yacht.

One of McCaw’s controversial actions: she killed a story on opinion editor Travis Armstrong’s arrest for drunken driving. Then, when things went downhill, she named Armstrong publisher … As the French say, voila! … The LA Observed blog has many angles here and here and here, including, a Teamster-powered uprising against Armstrong:

At 3:30 Thursday afternoon, about thirty of the remaining staff — including almost all reporters — stood up at their desks and walked silently to publisher Travis Armstrong’s office to present him with a letter announcing that they are now represented by the Graphic Communications Conference of the Teamsters union. The letter demanded that Armstrong observe journalism ethics, restore the traditional separation of news and opinion, and invite the six top editors who have resigned to return. … Armstrong, described as shaken by the show of solidarity, called the action inappropriate and ordered them to return to their desks.

GOAT’s view: It’s good to see someone, anyone, anywhere actively resisting the degradation of journalism that we’re seeing in many operations.

Meanwhile, the LA Times also has a not-directly-related NewsBiz think piece by William Powers, who opines that in general:

The media’s image has arguably hit a new low, though one hesitates to say that about a business for which fresh nadirs have become a way of life.

Powers, the media critic for National Journal, sees the bloblike industrywide mess. He includes some of the biggest papers (NY Times, Washington Post) having to duke it out with the Bush administration over revelations of government surveillance … But Powers is an optimist — or make that, a Darwinist. He says that the fittest journalists will survive and prosper, including bloggers who get it right. He adds:

Some journalists are worried that the profession is dying, but this is classic newsroom alarmism. As long as there is a popular hunger for truth — a constant of human society, last I checked — there will be work for people who want to dig it up. … As for the new transparency, it’s simply forcing us scribes to do what other powerful people have always had to do in this country: defend and answer for our actions. Ten years ago, the editor of the New York Times, certainly one of the most influential members of our society, was unknown to most Americans. Today, he’s on television and the websites, justifying a bold story he decided to publish against the government’s wishes, a story many Americans apparently feel shouldn’t have been published. It’s a brutal fight, but a meaningful one that is forcing us all to confront the role of the media in the age of terrorism. In a democracy, I don’t see how anyone can call this bad news.

Well … GOAT can’t quite muster that degree of optimism. We see a future of plenty more bad news within the NewsBiz … But we do believe in Darwin, and see online journalism evolving to be a leader … In the PS Department: GOAT is a nonprofit species, tucked under the wing of High Country News. Our CEO drives a minivan, and sometimes the aging plain-Jane company car, but never a yacht.