‘Santa Barbara News-Press’ Owner Wendy McCaw Questioned During Bankruptcy Proceedings

After swearing in Wendy McCaw, the owner of the bankrupt Santa Barbara News-Press, the trustee in charge of the bankruptcy proceedings and his attorney asked a series of questions over the telephone on Thursday afternoon in an attempt to find out where all the company’s money might be, or any assets that might pay the hundreds of creditors that the paper’s failure has left in its wake. McCaw’s answers were mostly “I don’t know,” giving the impression she’d been hands-off in most practical matters of the daily operations, if not in causing the failure of the 150-year-old daily.

McCaw bought the News-Press from the New York Times Company in 2000, paying an estimated $110 million for Santa Barbara’s only daily in pre-digital times. Twenty-three years later, with subscriptions dropping from 45,000 when she bought the paper to fewer than 800, she threw in the towel, filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on July 21, a date she had to ask others to provide for her during the creditors meeting. 

When McCaw precipitated a newsroom revolt after favoring a friend, actor Rob Lowe, and chastising a reporter and editors for running the address of a Montecito property he was developing, more than half of the subscribers to one of the oldest newspapers in the country canceled in a protest and to show their support for the staff. Reporters, editors, and columnists had quit in disgust and over the ethical compromise they were placed in; others were fired for their union activities.