FORTY-SIX YEARS AGO, the idyllic seaside city of Santa Barbara was torn apart by an ugly whispering campaign conducted by the John Birch Society, whose members used anonymous phone calls to suggest that certain local leaders were members of a communist conspiracy.
The Santa Barbara News-Press exposed the Birchers in a series of articles. The newspaper's publisher at the time, 85-year-old Thomas M. Storke, then denounced the group on the editorial page for smearing educators, members of the clergy and others with "cowardly diatribes." The editorial, published Feb. 16, 1961, won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday May 20, 2007 Home Edition Opinion Part M Page 3 Editorial Pages Desk 1 inches; 39 words Type of Material: Correction
Newspaper fight: An article in the May 13 Opinion section stated that Wendy McCaw, owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press, had sued the American Journalism Review over an article. She sued the author of the article, not the magazine.
Today, the Santa Barbara community has once more been torn apart, but this time by the News-Press itself. The saga began in July when the paper's respected editor, Jerry Roberts, as well as five other editors, a popular columnist and a reporter quit to protest billionaire owner Wendy McCaw's interference in newsroom decisions. During the next several months, more than 40 other reporters or editors were fired or resigned.
In the last few days, there have been half a dozen additional resignations, led by longtime book reviewer Susan Miles Gulbransen, prompted by disgust about a front-page article that appeared in the News-Press on April 22. The unsigned article said that Ampersand Publishing, the McCaw-controlled parent company of the newspaper, was seeking to retrieve from the Santa Barbara Police Department the hard drive of the office computer used by Roberts, "which contains according to the police more than 15,000 images of child and adult pornography."
Roberts denounced the article as "false, defamatory and malicious" and said the computer had been bought in used condition and had been utilized by at least three other editors before he came to the newspaper. His statement was supported by the Santa Barbara Police Department, which said the computer had multiple owners and was not protected by a password. The district attorney agreed and decided against filing charges. In response to the article, the weekly Santa Barbara Independent ran a grainy cover picture of McCaw above the headline: "Have You No Shame, Mrs. McCaw?"
One of the latest employees to quit was Lin Rolens, another book reviewer. In a letter of resignation, Rolens said that while reviewing a book on the Holocaust, she'd become aware of "how much the German people clearly knew about the genocide conducted in their name.... The obvious lesson is that when we encounter a direct affront to decency and what we value, we have two choices: We can be part of the problem or part of the solution."
