News-Suppress, Part 205

As promised, here is an update on the Drama-by-the-Sea: About 500 Santa Barbara News-Press staffers, former staffers and community leaders rallied outside the News-Press’s historic office building on Tuesday to let billionaire owner Wendy McCaw know that they were, um, mad.

McCaw, who said she only occasionally reads the News-Press was excoriated for allowing opinion to seep into news coverage and for turning a renowned California paper (just Saturday, the paper won two two first-place prizes at the annual awards of the California Newspaper Publishers Association) into a national joke.

McCaw didn’t attend the fete held in her honor, but her detractors noted that she ordered her lawyers to send cease-and-desist letters to three of the editors who quit the paper, threatening them with a lawsuit if they continue to speak out against her.

- Photos by Jeff Clark, sent courtesy of Santa Barbara freelance writer Molly Freedenberg, who noted she was “shocked to hear journalistic ethics discussed in the Vons checkout line.”

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