Behind the Closed Doors of the Santa Barbara News-Press

The once prominent Santa Barbara News-Press, which saw its final publication on July 21, 2023, now faces the aftermath of bankruptcy. The desolate building in the De la Guerra Plaza is left derelict with its historical archives at risk.

Bankruptcy trustee Jerry Namba invited potential bidders of the archives to go behind closed doors with the hopes to salvage treasures of the past. The long-ago beacon of journalism sustained a massive amount of turmoil under Ampersand Publishing and its owner Wendy McCaw which resulted in insolvency and the shuttering of a historic building.

Jean Yamamura of the Santa Barbara Independent reports the archives of the News-Press, a repository of over a century of Santa Barbara’s history, suffer from severe neglect and damage within the crumbling infrastructure of the building. Despite the owed $176,000 to creditor SoCal Edison which left the building without electricity, organizations like the Santa Barbara Historical Museum and UCSB’s Special Collections have expressed interest in acquiring the archives during the court-ordered auction to settle debts.

According to the Independent, the pathos of the News-Press’ decline is brought to life during the tour, contrasting the building’s Pulitzer Prize-winning past with its present decay. The bound archives, housing records dating back to 1870, struggle against time and environmental damage. The veritable collapse of the News-Press, juxtaposed against founding publisher T.M. Storke’s once-celebrated Pulitzer triumph over the John Birch Society, highlights the stark transformation of a newspaper that was once a pillar of American journalism.

Read Jean Yamamura’s full report here.