Some would say the end had been coming for a while, but the death of a 155-year-old newspaper is sad by any standards.

For the Santa Barbara News-Press, it came with a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in July last year, but the final act is being played out by Thursday week, last day of a timed online auction under which the assets of Ampersand Publishing are to be sold by order of the Central California Bankruptcy Court.

Maybe the beginning of the end was around the time that Wendy McCaw bought the paper from the New York Times in 2000 with US$100 million (A$147 million) from her reported US$460 million (A$677 million) divorce settlement from billionaire broadcasting heir Craig McCaw, who had won a mobile phone licence (and bought those of other winners) and was a former partner of Bill Gates in Teledesic.

Wikipedia notes that in the summer of 2006, six editors and a long-time columnist “suddenly resigned”, citing the imposition of McCaw and her managers’ personal opinions onto the process of reporting and publishing news.

Tensions had existed since McCaw bought the paper, and in the following year, a third of the 200 staff – including all but two reporters – “resigned or were fired” with the remainder voting to join the Teamsters union.

A variety of litigation followed – including suits against “former journalists and competing newspapers”, and as staff numbers fell, so did pagination. Newsroom numbers were down to 20 by 2016, and the final printed edition, on July 21, was of just four pages.

The auction covers plant at the Goleta print facility, to which operations had been moved ahead of the bankruptcy filing. It apparently includes the Goss Metrocolor offset newspaper press – of which no pictures are provided – and a variety of prepress and mailroom equipment, newsprint, 1990s vehicles, a bust of former proprietor Robert Maclean, and potential collectors’ items. More details at the auction website.

The News-Press started as a weekly, the Santa Barbara Post in May 1868, merging in 1932 with the News owned by Thomas Storke, a local rancher who went on to win a Pulitzer “for his forceful editorials”, 30 years later. Wendy McCaw, a Trump supporter, was apparently also partial to leader-writing, but if she won any prizes for it, we haven’t heard of them.

A group paid US$285,000 (A$420,000) for other assets including historical archives and bound copies from 1870. Proceeds of the auction go to meet liabilities, which may be as high as US$100,000… a a trifling sum by comparison with those at which recent history began.

Elements of the story continue, with McCaw in July, found in contempt of a US district Court judgment dating to 2017. The defunct paper is survived by both Wendy McCaw (born 1951) and ex-husband Craig, now aged 75.

Peter Coleman

Pictured: Items to be cleared, from the auctioneers’ website