US: local paper's management drives editors to resign

Posted by John Burke on July 10, 2006 at 4:37 PM

A local California paper, The Santa Barbara News-Press recently lost its editor-in-chief, deputy managing editor, metro, business and sports editors as well as a columnist who had been with the paper since 1960 when the seven resigned citing difficulties with the management. According to the former staff, continued cuts were undermining their ability to produce quality journalism.

The paper, which has a circulation of 41,000, is owned by Wendy P. McCaw whose ex-husband is a cellular phone titan. Her spokesman said that the resignations were the results of an announcement to increase local coverage.

But the former staff members cry foul, claiming that the paper's directors are hiding something. Said once editor-in chief Jerry Roberts, "These are primary ethical issues of the blurring of the line between opinion and fact, editorial page and news page. More than 100 papers ran a story about the resignations on Friday, but The News-Press was not among them. It ran a column by Travis Armstrong (recently appointed acting publisher) spinning it. To me, that proves the case that they're mixing up apples and oranges and that the paper is not doing a great service to readers who expect to find news on the front page instead of opinion."

If private owners are going to continue cutting resources from the newsroom, maybe their ownership is not the answer to newspapers' problems as has recently been suggested.

Source: The New York Times

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