The longest-running newspaper in southern California has ceased publication after filing for bankruptcy.
The Santa Barbara News-Press has posted its last online edition after ceasing print publication about a month ago.
The paper had been published for more than 150 years, since 1855, when its owner, Wendy McCaw, filed for bankruptcy. The managing editor, Dave Mason, broke the news about the paper’s closure to its staff in an email, the Santa Barbara Independent reported.
“I have some bad news,” the email read. “Wendy filed for bankruptcy on Friday. All of our jobs are eliminated, and the News-Press has stopped publishing. They ran out of money to pay us. They will issue final paychecks when the bankruptcy is approved in court.”
Neither the paper nor its representatives have commented publicly on the bankruptcy, which comes amid a broader, years-long wave of local newspaper closures across the US as the industry continues contracting.
The newspaper won a Pulitzer prize in 1962 for editorials that outed members of the far-right John Birch Society. It was previously owned by the New York Times before Wendy McCaw, ex-wife of the billionaire wireless pioneer Craig McCaw, bought the paper in 2000 for $110m.
McCaw’s control over the publication included turmoil in 2006 over complaints from journalists about her and her managers’ imposition of their opinions into reporting. Several staff were fired or resigned.
The American Journalism Review wrote in 2006, “When she put the editorial page editor in charge of the newsroom, then left with the restaurant critic on a month-long Mediterranean cruise aboard her multimillion-dollar yacht, the editors figured it couldn’t get much worse.” The AJR noted McCaw was a libertarian who, former employees claimed, began imposing her views and interfering in reporting when she took over the paper.
Joshua Molina of Noozhawk, a Santa Barbara-based online news outlet, claimed credit for breaking the story of the bankruptcy filing and ceasing of publication by the paper on Twitter, according to the Los Angeles Times. The bankruptcy filing noted a bankruptcy meeting of the company’s creditors, between 200 and 999, is scheduled for 1 September. The company claims to have assets of less than $50,000, with $1m to $10m in liabilities.