By Jorge Mercado Thursday, January 23rd, 2025

It has been a year and a half since the Santa Barbara News Press, the former longest running daily newspaper in Southern California, shuttered its doors — but the media outlet might have new life in 2025.

Ben Romo, a principal at Romo & Associates in Santa Barbara, spearheaded a group dubbed NP 2024 LLC, which bid $285,000 for the former newspaper’s website, trademark and social media accounts in April 2024.

With those assets in possession, Romo announced Jan. 22 that the group would be donating the News Press as a business to NEWSWELL. This new nonprofit group is affiliated with Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The goal of NEWSWELL is to strengthen local news outlets in areas known as “news deserts.” A news desert is an area with limited or nonexistent coverage by local or national news outlets.

Nicole Carroll, executive director of NEWSWELL, told the Business Times Jan. 22 that she and the rest of the team will spend the next two to three months holding meetings, listening and understanding the needs of the Santa Barbara community.

After that, then NEWSWELL will put together an informed staffing plan and timeline for the relaunch of the News-Press.

NEWSWELL intends to restart the News-Press as a locally based online media outlet with the newsroom being led by local editors, reporters, and staff.

Other online media outlets would include daily news organizations such as Noozhawk, The Santa Barbara Independent, Coastal View News — which primarily focuses on Carpinteria coverage — as well as news stations like KEYT, KSBY and other radio stations.

“Our intention is to be additive to the news ecosystem and to be collaborative with the existing newsroom,” Carroll said.

The site, newspress.com, however, is back up and running, she said.

“It’s really just a way to communicate with the community,” Carroll said about the website.

“We’re here to listen and learn and find out from the people of Santa Barbara what they would like as far as news information.”

A local advisory board will also be established to help further ensure that the News-Press is connected with, and responding to, the local community, according to Romo.

“While many suggested we restart the paper, we had no interest in doing so ourselves and were also concerned about selling the business to for-profit actors who might not be driven by the community’s best interests. However, since we owned the News-Press as a business, we had to consider what to do with it,” Romo said in a statement.

“At a time of extreme partisanship and divisiveness at the national level, local news matters more than ever. This is an excellent opportunity for Santa Barbara to be part of a national movement to save local news, and to expand news coverage in our community. While we have no desire to stay involved with the News-Press going forward, we are pleased it will be revived and led by professionals who have unbiased news coverage and the best interests of our community as their guiding principles.”

Despite being based in Arizona, NEWSWELL is currently focusing its efforts in California, having acquired Times of San Diego and Stocktonia in addition to the Santa Barbara News-Press. 

All three newsrooms were donated, according to Mi-Ah Parrish, the managing director of ASU Media Enterprise and board director for NEWSWELL.

NEWSWELL, which came out of stealth mode on Jan. 22, also announced that it received a $5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a group that supports effective democracy by funding innovative projects related to free expression, journalism, research, arts and culture to help provide these three media outlets with support.

“We know that having a reliable and high-quality source of local news knits together communities and increases civic engagement,” Carroll said in a press release.

“Our mission is to support local news organizations so they can help their communities thrive.”

Editor of Times of San Diego, Chris Jennewein, said in a statement that since joining NEWSWELL, it has been able to double its staff and is now publishing as many as 30 articles per day.

“I started Times of San Diego because I see local news as an essential part of democracy, and becoming part of NEWSWELL ensures that Times of San Diego will be here for the long run,” he said.

Digital archives of the Santa Barbara News-Press are now housed at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum.

The physical archives were to be sold by the Bankruptcy Court separately and the Historical Museum successfully bid on them in September. 

“We are exceedingly pleased with this outcome, and we hope others will join us in supporting the Historical Museum as they take on the herculean effort of conserving the archives,” Romo said.

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