It’s hard to imagine the local news without Marilyn McMahon, the grande dame of Santa Barbara’s quixotic press corps. During 48 years at the News-Press, by her own estimate, she wrote more than 6,000 stories about her fellow Santa Barbarans, becoming a master interviewer and quintessential Woman About Town along the way.
Marilyn began her News-Press career in 1975 and filed her last story in late May. Then she fell and broke her ribs. Laid up in assisted living and then back at home, in hospice, with a lift to hoist her in and out of bed, she kept talking about getting back to work and finding someone to dictate stories to.
Marilyn’s former boss (and, unfortunately, mine), Santa Barbara News-Press owner and co-publisher Wendy McCaw, had shamelessly declared bankruptcy on July 21, and the historic institution where Marilyn had spent half a lifetime was dead. But, Marilyn told me on the phone one day, Bill MacFadyen, the founder and publisher of Noozhawk, the online news site, had offered her a job at age 93!
