(Photo of Jerry Roberts, left, former executive editor of the Santa Barbara News Press, with Dan Gillmor.)
I spent the day today as a guest and participant at Newspaper 2.0, a workshop put on by Doc Searls at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Months in the making, the gathering drew 30 to 35 locals — journalists, academics, new media publishers, attorneys — to a trailer classroom on campus here to discuss citizen journalism, news coverage in the digital age, and how newspapers need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant with a generation that trusts bloggers and social networks more than professional journalists.
What triggered the gathering, of course, was the spectacular flameout of the Santa Barbara News Press, the daily newspaper that was purchased a few years back for about $100 million by billionaire Wendy McCaw. Since last summer, nearly the entire newsroom has been fired or quit in disgust in one of the most jaw-dropping acts of self-immolation ever by a daily newspaper. For background, read this entry at SPJ, local observer Craig Smith’s Blog, or citizen media site Edhat Online, or today’s story from that newspaper down the road:
LA Times: In Santa Barbara, News-Press has become the paper of rancor. More firings, more protests: Fallout from the owner’s showdown with her staff runs deep. Excerpt:
McCaw has filed a lawsuit against Fullerton-based journalist Susan
Paterno over an unflattering portrait in American Journalism Review and
ordered her lawyer to send "cease and desist" letters to local small
businesses that displayed the "McCaw obey the Law" signs.
It’s a nearly wide-open media landscape down here, with the weekly Independent, a new daily paper called The Sound, and various online efforts. Doc conducted today’s workshop in the mold of the various Camp/Open Space workshops. Dan Gillmor and I kicked off things with a discussion of the latest trends in citizen media. Then we broke into ad hoc small-group sessions, such as political activism on the Internet, the role of advertising on the net, legal issues, Web video, what is news?, social networking and news, mobile and news.
Each session had its own highlights (I didn’t take notes), but the thread that ran throughout the day was a belief that newspapers play a deep and vital role in our lives, and the community has a stake in ensuring that local media — whether in print or online — have a responsibility to the public trust and not only to the whims and quirks of publishers, no matter how deep their pockets run. The group planned to continue to collaborate in the weeks and months ahead.
Here are some photos I took today with my Nokia N93 camera phone, and I’ll post a video interview soon.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
I thought at first that this article was some sort of joke. But as I read further, I could see that it was no joke, that so many people at the newspaper lost their job. I feel sorry for them.
Its hard to lose a job, especially when its not your fault. Its amazing that anyone could be allowed to do this.
I thought at first that this article was some sort of a joke. But as I read further about all those unfortunate workers that lost their jobs, I knew it was real and no joke.
I feel bad for the workers that lost their jobs and I’m scratching my head wondering how this was allowed to happen,