By: Joe Strupp The 18-month labor battle at the Santa Barbara News-Press, which has sparked creation of a newsroom union, caused dozens of staffers to depart, and resulted in a slew of unfair labor charges, is now reaching the big screen.
"Citizen McCaw," a documentary film created by several local residents and filmmakers, will debut March 7, organizers announced Thursday. It is described as ?an epic struggle for the soul of journalism? that "chronicles the twists and turns of community protests, legal maneuverings, a union vote, child pornography charges, a 25% decline in circulation, a noticeable drop in the paper's coverage of local news and issues, and numerous other events."
The film reports on events that began in July 2006 when editor Jerry Roberts and five of his colleagues quit in protest of alleged meddling in the newsroom's decisions by owner Wendy McCaw. At least 46 staffers have been fired or quit in the fallout.
"McCaw and dozens of her former staffers have been engaged in a fierce clash of wills that raises important national questions of journalistic ethics and media ownership," a release about the film stated.
McCaw representatives were not immediately reachable for comment Thursday.
The paper has also seen an economic drop, revealing in the last Audit Bureau of Circulations Fas-Fax report in October that its circulation had dropped 14.1% to 33,755 for the six-month period ending September 2007.
Producers said that more than 80 hours of footage were shot, including interviews with the likes of The Washington Post's former executive editor Ben Bradlee, journalist Ann Louise Bardach, former NBC News reporter Sander Vanocur, Ronald Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, and Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy.
Filmmakers added that they had received four warning letters from attorneys representing McCaw. "The letters threaten legal action depending on the film's content," the producers said in a statement. "In 2007, her attorneys subpoenaed all of the raw footage shot for the film, as well as all of the production and interview notes. The subpoena was considered a 'fishing expedition' and was immediately revoked by William Kocal, the administrative law judge who oversaw the trial of The Santa Barbara News-Press on charges of violating federal labor laws."
Producers said that the movie will premiere at Santa Barbara's Arlington Theatre on Friday night, March 7th at 7:30 PM. They said that talks were in the works for a broadcast or cable viewing, but offered no specifics.
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