Barry Punzal had labored hard for a quarter-century in the sports department at the Santa Barbara News-Press. He won sports editor post in mid-2006, just as the paper was shaken to its roots by a controversy involving the news independence of the paper and its owner, 57-year-old cell phone heiress Wendy McCaw.
Punzal worked to protect the paper’s sports department from the turmoil wracking the newsroom, where several editors had walked out and seven reporters were fired in the midst of the their efforts to join a union.
Punzal thought of himself as working for the town’s readers, not the ownership. “My point was that I don’t work for Wendy. I work for the Santa Barbara community, and sports,” he told the competing Santa Barbara Daily Sound.
But Punzal found out last week that he does work for McCaw after all. Though uninvolved in the union flare-up or firestorm over newsroom independence, Punzal was handed a pink slip. It was one of 10 sprinkled around the 153-year-old paper that was once owned by the New York Times Co. More are sure to follow, staffers said.
Old-line paid daily newspapers across the land are cutting staffs, rocked by slowly sliding circulation, Internet competition, and generally poor business models involving paid circulation and monopoly ad rates. But the Santa Barbara case is especially compelling.
McCaw appears to have helped herself to the bad times, spawning competition from a start-up and other papers, and heavy spending on litigation in which she vowed — thus far unsuccessfully — to fend off charges of unfair labor practices.
Her spokesperson these days is her lawyer — A. Barry Cappello. He is representing her not just in a dispute with the National Labor Relations Board, but also in three cases in which she’s lashed out and sued a competing paper, a deposed editor, and a respected national journalism review. All this while Cappello is pleading that one reason for the McCaw paper’s financial distress is the cost of “excessive litigation.”
It wasn’t always so bad.
When the New York Times decided to sell the News-Press in 2000, some Santa Barbarans rejoiced that a local owner was the buyer. McCaw hired a respected editor and set about concentrating on local news coverage.
It took a few years for the wheels to come off, but loud squeaking is always a clue. McCaw, who would later claim she fired seven reporters for “bias,” had a few odd ones of her own. She urged readers to avoid eating turkeys on Thanksgiving and ordered that reporters stop spelling “blonde” with an “e.”
Then things got more serious. Her favored editorial writer, Travis Armstrong, found himself busted in 2006 for drunk driving, bound the wrong way down a one-way street. The original arrest story ran in the News-Press, but McCaw ordered a follow-up story spiked. When “one-way Armstrong” was elevated to control over the entire newsroom, the staff revolted and the respected editor quit, followed by several others.
Then McCaw reprimanded staffers for running the address of actor Rob Lowe, who was involved in a highly public dispute over plans to build a 15,000-square-foot mansion — a story in which the address was a central issue.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Mayor Marty Blum lamented at the time, recalling visions of a local owner reinvigorating the hometown paper.
It would get worse still. McCaw fired seven reporters in early 2007 after they hung a banner over a freeway urging subscribers to cancel their subscriptions. The News-Press reported circulation figures off 7 percent — more than nearby paper declines, according to the Daily Sound (which is free). The campaign was part of a legally protected union organizing activity, so a trial followed at which McCaw sought unsuccessfully to convince a magistrate that the reporters were fired for “bias.” (She’s appealing the ruling).
Already, the News-Press was bleeding, its reputation for straight news coverage tarnished. Its city staff was reportedly bleeding. At one point it ran wire coverage of nearby wildfires instead of using its own staff. One rival newspaper, the weekly Independent, reported gains in advertising, while another, the upstart Daily Sound, slowly gained traction, partly by treating the turmoil at the News-Press as hard front-page news.
Old-line paid dailies are already in decline, but McCaw’s antics, and her fondness for heavy legal fees, appear to be harming her cause. Circulations are gradually sliding because paid dailies can’t sign up new subscribers fast enough to offset the “churn” of cancellations. Other monopoly dailies have found their unusually high advertising rates under attack.
It’s difficult to look at the News-Press without imagining a dose of missing style. McCaw is a wealthy heiress, whose boyfriend doubles as the paper’s publisher. She could have selected a high road in communicating, deftly sprinkling praise and mea culpas. Her hard-nose tactics appear to fit her poorly, and represent a virulent case of absent style.
The Santa Barbara News-Press has enough enemies. It doesn’t need another one from within its own executive suite.
The Usual Suspect is a founder of the Aspen Daily News and appears here each Sunday. Counsel, console or berate him at ddanforth@aol.com. Your notes will be kept private unless you ask that we print them.
