Global Courant
The Santa Barbara News-Press is no more. After more than 150 years of gathering news, the Pulitzer Prize-winning paper has posted its final online edition a month after the News-Press stopped publishing its print paper and went all-digital.
The death knell for the once mighty but long floundering News-Press came last week in the form of a bankruptcy filing by Ampersand Publishing LLC, the entity with which the newspaper does business.
Ampersand’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing was approved at a meeting “on or about” May 1, nearly three months before it was filed Friday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, according to federal court documents.
The move also comes about three months after the paper moved its operations and staff from its landmark building on Santa Barbara’s De la Guerra Plaza — where it had been housed for the past 101 years — to its printing facility in Goleta, the Santa Barbara Independent. reported.
As of Sunday evening, the News-Press website appeared to make no mention of the bankruptcy or cessation of operations. There was also no mention on the Twitter feed, Facebook page or Instagram account, whose biography still reads, “Publishing since 1855 – the longest-running daily newspaper in Southern California.” Friday’s is the most recent online edition of the publication to be posted on the website, with a red lettering banner stating that “The News-Press is all-digital” directing readers to the online edition. The Friday edition is the last to be published by the News-Press, according to the Independent.
Dave Mason, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday evening.
Mason wrote in an email to News-Press employees that Wendy McCaw, the company’s owner since 2000, “filed for bankruptcy on Friday,” the Independent reported. “They ran out of money to pay us. They will issue the final salary when the bankruptcy is approved by the court. The contents of the email could not be independently verified on Sunday.
Neither Jerry Namba, the trustee, nor Levene, Neale, Bender, Yoo & Golubchik, the law firm identified in the bankruptcy filing as representing Ampersand, responded to requests for comment by phone or email on Sunday. A voicemail message left on the News-Press main line went unanswered Sunday night.
The outfit is in serious financial straits, according to Ampersand’s Chapter 7 filing. A meeting of the company’s creditors — of which there are 200 to 999, according to Friday’s filing — is scheduled for Sept. 1. But according to the document, “no property appears to be available to pay creditors,” meaning the company, which claims to have less than $50,000 in assets, is unlikely to meet its obligations of $1 million to $10 million.
Joshua Molina of Noozhawk, a Santa Barbara-based online news outlet, took credit break the story in a tweet Sunday afternoon.
