If you live in Santa Barbara, you may be aware of the current controversy surrounding the Santa Barbara News-Press. Basically, this billionaire, Wendy McCaw, bought the newspaper in 2000. As owner, she felt she should have a say in the paper and be able to control its content. Some journalists who disagreed with her stance resigned in protest in July 2006. Since then the whole thing has turned into a gnarly mess, which other publications have covered like drivers rubber-necking at an accident. Most staff are in favor of starting a union and many have been fired for speaking out in support of one. Bizarre lawsuits and nastygrams have been sent out all over the place from Ampersand (the New-Press parent company) and the whole thing is getting out of hand. If you want to learn more, please see the Wikipedia article on the situation.
Anyway, the journalists have called for supporters to cancel their subscriptions and a large boycott is in effect. The problem is, the News-Press is the only home-delivered daily paper based in Santa Barbara. There are a few freesheets and weekly papers but they don’t present much of an alternative individually. And that what’s about to change. I have started a website, newsoffthepress.com, that collects the most recent headlines and stories from local print publications, television and radio stations, and blogs and presents them in one place.
News Off The Press benefits both readers and publishers alike. Readers are provided with a one-stop resource to find the latest news; publishers can expect to see traffic driven to their sites. Our name comes from the goal of news found without McCaw’s influence (news that is off of the Press) as well as invoking the idea of news “hot off the press”. Living up to our name, freshly published stories are aggregated by software and presented on our homepage as soon as available.
The project is in beta but the site is up and running strong. If you want to learn more about how it works or how to best navigate the site, take a look at the about page. Comments can be sent to contact@newsoffthepress.com if you want. Alright, let’s banish the bias!