The Indy’s Best from 2020
A Reporter Looks Back at the Most-Read Stories
Contagion and avoiding it held center-stage this year, as befits a world-changing event. But other news was made in Santa Barbara County out of the struggles of politics, fossil fuels, and even journalism.
The Palminteri Push Heard Around the World was catnip for us all, while News-Press Editor and Owner Part Ways captured the latest implosion in a slowly accreting debacle. Nonetheless, the schadenfreude over harassed journalists couldn’t hold a candle to the Death of Newborn Giraffe, which absorbed the attention of 750,000 readers.
The One-Two Punch that hit ExxonMobil’s trucking plans was a climate-change story that started in San Francisco and landed in Santa Barbara without ever uttering the words “global warming.” The political climate in Santa Barbara this year included the movements triggered by the murder of George Floyd and the meaning embedded in “Taking a Knee” — movements, for good or ill, that contributor Osaama Saifi likened to a Civil War. The potential continuation of Trump’s administration brought out voters in record numbers, highlights of the elections in March and November. In the courts, though many insist on his innocence, Sad Boy Loko, aka Mario Hernandez-Pacheco, pled an attempted-murder rap down to felony assault in January.
