Editor-in-chief Marianne Partridge has sued publisher Randy Campbell in Santa Barbara County Superior Court for breach of contract in a legal dispute that Independent reporter Nick Welsh says "could have major ramifications for the ownership structure" of the paper. Partridge, a minority shareholder, claims that Campbell -- who owns 51 percent of the company -- is in violation of contract language that requires him to offer to sell his stock to Partridge or one of the other two minority owners before selling to anyone else. The dispute stems from Campbell's apparent desire to sell his share of the Independent to Valley Printers, which prints the paper and is owned by Southland Publishing, the parent company of four Southern California AAN member papers.
The Independent's senior editor Matt Kettmann is a co-founder of New Noise Santa Barbara, a music conference and festival that debuted Oct. 8-10 at venues throughout downtown Santa Barbara. "We're telling locals that it's like the wildly popular Santa Barbara International Film Fest, but with music," says Kettmann, the paper's former pop culture editor who more recently directed the editorial development of Independent.com. "And we're telling everyone else that it's like South By Southwest, but much smaller and on the coast." The Independent served as an official media sponsor and published the conference's program guide.
Independent senior editor Matt Kettmann tells us via email that the paper has published about 50 stories since the Jesusita wildfire started on Tuesday afternoon at www.independent.com/jesusita. The paper has been doing up-to-the-minute coverage with a staff of about a dozen -- on top of putting out a print edition this week as well. Kettmann says its an example of "how weeklies can handle pretty important and heavy loads."
Two AAN members are finalists in this year's EPpy Awards, which "honor the best websites in the media world." Las Vegas Weekly is a finalist for best entertainment website with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors, while Baltimore City Paper is a finalist for best weekly newspaper-affiliated website, a category the Santa Barbara Independent won last year. Winners of the awards, which are sponsored by Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek magazines, will be announced on May 7.
Alan Mutter says newspapers shouldn't charge for access to their websites unless they provide content that is "unique and valuable." As an example, he says the pay wall erected by the daily Santa Barbara News-Press has left the paper with less than half of the traffic generated by the much smaller Independent. When wildfires threatened Santa Barbara in November, Mutter says, "scant information" was available for non-subscribers on the daily's site, while the alt-weekly's site -- which won a 2008 EPpy Award for best weekly newspaper-affiliated website -- "brimmed with up-to-the-minute bulletins, first-person reports" and fire photos.
Against the advice of friends, family, and colleagues, The Independent's news reporter Ben Preston has embarked on a month-long embedded tour of Iraq with the U.S. Army's 425th Civil Affairs Battalion, which is based in Santa Barbara. Why? "I'm hoping to take a look at some of the economic work that is being done here," he explained. "I knew that coalition forces from all over the world were here, but seeing how many non-military people are working here, it becomes apparent that many people have become economically dependent upon the rebuilding process." Follow Preston's continually updated blog online at independent.com/iraq.
AAN's new eighth-page display ad network, known as AAN BRAN, published its first network-wide ad the week of Dec. 8. The ad, from the charity Direct Relief International, ran in scores of papers across the country and was sold by Evan Wells of the Santa Barbara Independent. Click through to learn more about the new program.
In the fourteenth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, the Santa Barbara Independent's Nick Welsh discusses his award-winning media coverage of the local daily. In the midst of reporting on turmoil at the Santa Barbara News-Press, Welsh eventually became part of the story himself, as he was sued by the paper for copyright infringement. He tells Tess Martinez how he became the go-to guy for News-Press news, the chilling effect of being sued by another paper, and how the Independent has stepped in as the News-Press has essentially committed suicide. "Santa Barbara is a community trying to figure out how to live without a daily paper," Welsh says. "At the Independent, we're trying to figure out a way to become a de facto daily with the internet. We're doing OK, but we're still struggling."
AAN News has been informed that we missed the fact that the Santa Barbara Independent won several California Newspaper Publishers Association awards when we reported on the awards last week. Indy publisher Randy Campbell notes that the press association for some reason omitted the "Santa Barbara" from the paper's name and simply called it The Independent. The alt-weekly won five awards this year, including first-place finishes in Feature Photo and Investigative/Enterprise Reporting.
IndyAlert will provide email, text message, and radio announcements (via partner station KCSB-FM) "during emergencies and public safety challenges." The service is free, but users must subscribe. "In the past two years we've been on the literal front lines of many of Santa Barbara's disasters and emergencies, with our website providing timely coverage we couldn't achieve with the weekly newspaper. But we sometimes found the immediacy of our website was inconvenient or unavailable," publisher Randy Campbell says. "By adding text messaging and email alerts, we can use the wide availability of cell phones to keep our subscribers informed. Add radio to the mix and we've got particularly valuable tools for communication during a power outage or on the go."
