Paper's battle continues

BY ERIC LINDBERG
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the resignation of editor-in-chief Jerry Roberts, four other top editors and columnist Barney Brantingham from the Santa Barbara News-Press.
Since last year, close to 50 people have quit or been fired from the News-Press, the majority resigning over displeasure with News-Press owner and co-publisher Wendy McCaw’s management of the paper.

On July 6, 2006, Roberts and five others resigned, citing McCaw’s growing influence over the editorial direction of the paper as their impetus for leaving. Later that month, News-Press staff petitioned to unionize. On September 27, 2006, the newsroom staff voted 33-6 in favor of joining the Graphic Communications Conference, a branch of the Teamsters Union.
News-Press management filed an objection with the National Labor Relations Board, contending that the union illegally influenced the election. Several of those objections have been dismissed by the NLRB. The remainder are still under review.
By October 3, 2006, 25 people had quit or been fired from the newspaper.
In early February 2007, News-Press management fired six reporters -- Tom Schultz, Melissa Evans, John Zant, Dawn Hobbs, Rob Kuznia and Barney McManigal -- after they hung a banner reading “Cancel Your Newspaper Today!” from a footbridge on Anapamu Street. Cappello told the Daily Sound in February that the paper had a legal right to fire them.
Shortly after the firings, the Teamsters union charged the News-Press with unfair labor practices in violation of the National Labor Relations Act. In June, the National Labor Review Board set a hearing date of August 14 to prosecute the News-Press for those violations.
“We’ve been very careful to not comment on [National Labor Review Board matters],” Cappello told the Daily Sound yesterday. “We are planning on dealing with the NLRB hearing in the manner that we deal with all legal hearings, in the courtroom. That’s where the true facts will come out.”
On April 22, 2007, the News-Press ran a story without a byline on the front page about child pornography found on the hard drive of former editor Jerry Robert’s computer. The Santa Barbara County District Attorney declined to file charges after determining that several people other than Roberts had previously used the computer. The day after the News-Press story ran, Roberts spoke out against it, calling it a smear and later demanding a retraction.
“Mr. Roberts has asserted he had nothing to do with the images, and we have published in detail those assertions without any belief stated otherwise,” McCaw wrote in a recent editorial published in the News-Press and on its website. “It is not a smear by anyone.”
Attempts to reach Roberts by the Daily Sound for comment were not successful. Roberts and the News-Press are currently involved in arbitration over alleged breaches of contract by both parties.
The editorial penned by McCaw also included her position on the resignations and firings of the past year.
“When I first purchased the News-Press seven years ago, I had no idea the depth of bias that existed in the stories written,” she wrote, continuing, “We needed to turn the News-Press into a newspaper that was unbiased, ethical, accurate and accountable to the owner. Former employees in the newsroom who didn’t share that vision have left. ... No employee has the right to tell me to ‘butt out’ of my own business.”
Lou Cannon, an author and former Washington Post writer who has traded editorial jabs with McCaw in the Los Angeles Times and other publications in recent months, disagreed.
“There is no newspaper in America that is as unconcerned about basic journalism ethics as the News-Press,” Cannon told the Daily Sound. “...All the civilized rules we live by don’t apply to Wendy McCaw. I think this is a very un-American way she’s behaving, I don’t like it, and I’m going to continue to speak out against it.”
Cannon, in a letter responding to McCaw’s most recent editorial, predicted that she will lose her arbitration case against Roberts as well as the hearing before the NLRB in August.
“I think that eventually the forces of light are going to prevail,” Cannon said. “It’s going to take a very long time. She has unlimited resources and most of the people she’s trying to crush have limited resources. It’s not an equal fight.”