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.