Many news media outlets in the Tri-Counties have been shrinking in recent years, as they have been struggling financially. Now, there’s word there may be a major news outlet in Santa Barbara County.
A group of philanthropists headed by Ben Romo bought some of the assets of the Santa Barbara News-Press after it filed for bankruptcy in 2023. They wanted to preserve the newspaper’s historical digital assets. The Santa Barbara Historical Museum bought the physical archives.
The digital assets also included the more than 150-year-old newspaper’s name, trademark, domains, and other related intellectual property.
The group announced it will donate the News-Press to a non-profit group called NEWSWELL, which will restart the paper as a local online media news outlet. It's affiliated with Arizona State University. If it happens, it will compete with Noozhawk, an established online newspaper which has become a respected news source in the county.
The newspaper had a long tradition of community coverage, but it became tarnished in the years before its bankruptcy by a controversy involving its owner's role in editorial freedom. Some longtime staff members quit, some were fired, and then there was a huge dispute when the staff voted to unionize. It lost subscribers and advertising in its final years, but some of that may have also been related to the overall decline in the print journalism business.
