Letters to the Editor: Santa Barbara News-Press bankruptcy deals another blow to local news

To the editor: I grew up reading the Santa Barbara News-Press. Images of my father reading it in the evenings and typing earnest, oft-published letters-to-the-editor — a lesson I internalized! — remain vivid childhood memories. The moderate-leaning daily was an integral part of my life growing up in a city I knew was special even as a child. Its historic De La Guerra Plaza location — which hosted the Old Spanish Days fiesta — engendered awe.

I returned during graduate school in the mid-1980s to do a journalism internship with the paper and pinched myself that I could enter its venerable portal as a member of the staff with my own byline. Upon graduating, I realized newspapers were already facing untenable headwinds and redirected my focus to tech.

The publication’s ignominious endorsement of former President Trump, the first such endorsement from a daily paper, seemed to cement its rightward turn after Wendy McCaw’s purchase in 2000 from the New York Times Co.

I subscribe to both the L.A. Times’ print edition and our own struggling daily (one of the few to see an actual paper land on our driveway), and I lament the dire direction each is taking. Social media is not a replacement for local, ink-on-your-hands information.

Mary MacGregor, La Quinta

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To the editor: Yes, newspapers are having a difficult time surviving in 2023. I am a woman in my late 70s who remembers the vital role our Santa Barbara News-Press provided to our county. Every morning before my dad went to work, he had his coffee and the paper. Then when my grandmother had finished her day, I can still see her resting on her bed reading the paper. Finally, it was my turn to check out the news — the comics were quite important to an 8-year-old.

But the point is that the Santa Barbara News-Press died in the year 2000 when McCaw took it over, leading to this very sad set of events.

Katherine Chapman Wetzel, Santa Barbara