Newsroom fight spills into streets of once-peaceful Santa Barbara

New York Times News Service ^ | Jan. 18, 2007 | Sharon Waxman

[george76]

A nasty fight between the news staff and the owner of a local paper here has created some new casualties: readers.

Take, for example, Eric Zahm, a hairdresser who hung a sign in his window taking Wendy P. McCaw, owner and co-publisher of The Santa Barbara News-Press, to task for not recognizing a vote to unionize her news staff.

Within days, Zahm received a letter from a lawyer for McCaw, warning him that the sign - which read, “McCaw Obey the Law” - could get him sued for defamation.

After consulting a lawyer, Zahm took the bright orange sign down from the window and instead hung it on the ceiling above the sinks, where clients can now see it while getting their hair washed. As for the cease-and-desist letter, Zahm enlarged it, laminated it and hung it in his window.

Since a full-blown war erupted last July between McCaw, a local billionaire, and the staff of her newsroom ...

Circulation has fallen ...

Lawyers for McCaw have sent cease-and-desist letters to at least a half-dozen shop owners who posted the “Obey the Law” sign...

Meanwhile, the top editing job has remained vacant since the departure of Roberts along with five other top editors and a columnist who resigned in sympathy with him last July.

Some 30 members of the newsroom have left or been fired from the paper, leaving a staff of about 40. And last month McCaw fired the chief financial officer, Randy Alcorn, and the company’s controller resigned the next week. They too have not been replaced.

The situation “has created a lot of havoc,” ...

“She had made it worse and worse. The whole place was like a morgue.”

[george76]

wasting money on the liberal rag...?

.

[george76]

a vicious cat fight between elite liberal mediots...

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

I see this report is from the New York Times. Well, they should certainly be a foremost authority on losing readers.

[Anti-Bubba182]

"wasting money on the liberal rag...?"

If so good!

[george76]

latest

http://www.independent.com/opinion/2006/07/xdogs_the_last_stand.html

[NathanR]

July 6, 2006. That is the latest?

[george76]

This thread is the latest.

The link was from last year ( pictures, etc. ).

[Brad from Tennessee]

Having grown up in the newspaper business I can tell you that reporters and editors think the whole business revolves around them, perhaps because they are the visible part. In truth, advertising, composing, the press room, mail room, circulation, etc. are the real working people of the industry. Editorial people are a dime a dozen, particularly today with all the layoffs. If these people want to be in a union they should get a real job like working in a coal mine.

[Doctor Raoul]

Headline: LIBERAL PAPER SUES TO SILENCE FREE SPEECH

[george76]

The New York Times is doing nicely losing their readers, advertisers, and stock prices.

[Doctor Raoul]

In truth, advertising, composing, the press room, mail room, circulation, etc. are the real working people of the industry.

And they will be the ones who suffer the consequences of the liberal bias that destroys their livelihood.

Editorial people are a dime a dozen, particularly today with all the layoffs.

You overpaid.

If these people want to be in a union they should get a real job like working in a coal mine.

How about just have them trade places? People don't trust reporters, but I've never heard that said about coal miners.

[Lancey Howard]

She should close down, fire everybody, and start from scratch. Hire the new staff very carefully.

[originalbuckeye]

Santa Barbara, liberal mecca. Such a beautiful place......now wasted on the hypocritical elite leftists.

[MikeHu]

There just isn't enough attention span for all the media hogs who want to be Masters of the Universe.

[george76]

I like your title much better.

[kcvl]

Wendy P. McCaw is the multi-millionaire owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press. She is also known as an animal rights activist.

Born Wendy Petrak around 1951, she met Craig McCaw, the son of a wealthy Seattle media owner, at Stanford University where they both majored in History. They married in 1974. The couples' tumultuous divorce in the mid-1990s gained McCaw her fortune.

Mrs. McCaw and her former husband, cellular phone pioneer Craig McCaw, gave millions in donations in the 1990s to help return Keiko, the orca star of "Free Willy," to the wild.

In her editorials in the News-Press, Mrs. McCaw is a staunch defender of animal rights, arguing against whaling operations and a federally funded hunt to kill feral pigs on the Santa Barbara Channel Islands. Her defense of animals while also opposing an ordinance to increase the minimum wage for city workers has led to some criticism. Soon after her purchase of the paper, an editorial called for an end to the Thanksgiving tradition of eating turkey, because of the suffering of the "unwilling participants."

[george76]

She sounds like Pelosi who wanted the minimum wages and union benefits for all employees except her employees.

[CyberAnt]

Sounds to me like insubordination .. and I'd have already fired quite a few people.

But .. liberals are such cowards.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Somewhere, Craig McCaw is chuckling.

[6SJ7]

Soon after her purchase of the paper, an editorial called for an end to the Thanksgiving tradition of eating turkey, because of the suffering of the "unwilling participants."

Probably a hate crime to eat a turkey on rye in this paper's newsroom.