‘Citizen McCaw’ Returns for Special Screening in Santa Barbara

When Citizen McCaw premiered at the Arlington Theatre in 2008, the audience was treated not only to the tale of the undoing of the Santa Barbara News-Press but a communal viewing replete with the hissing and booing and laughter of everyone around them. With the recent death of the daily newspaper, the folks behind the blog Newsmakers with JR — Jerry Roberts and Hap Freund — invite the public to a fresh screening, this one free at the Marjorie Luke Theatre, on Wednesday, September 27, at 7 p.m., followed by answers to questions sent by the audience in advance.

Jerry Roberts, of course, was editor in chief of the News-Press when he walked out of the building in 2006, accompanied by four other editors and longtime columnist Barney Brantingham. That walkout lit the bonfire that became the News-Press Mess. The Mess takes 78 minutes to unwind during Citizen McCaw, with questions of journalism ethics, honest reporting, and the role of a newspaper’s owner at the fore. Roberts’s co-producer since their TV Santa Barbara days is Freund, who has worked behind the scenes for decades in communities and communications.

Citizen McCaw came to be a lesson in how not to run a newsroom, seen in classrooms around the country, said one of the producers, Rod Lathim. “I believe this is as much a moral story as it is a deep look at journalism and ethics,” Lathim said of the renewal the documentary is enjoying. Only a month ago, the paper’s billionaire owner, Wendy McCaw, was forced to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.