Breaking: Santa Barbara's New News-Press Names Josh Molina as Editor

In a Newsmakers interview, the veteran newsman discusses his vision for the recently-launched digital news operation, what it means for South Coast residents, and for the local media landscape.

In a journalistic master stroke, leaders of the non-profit organization that is relaunching the Santa Barbara News-Press announced on Monday their appointment of prominent local newsman Josh Molina as Editor of the enterprise.

The 52-year old Molina, a longtime mainstay of the local media landscape, has spent the past decade breaking stories for Noozhawk, after paying his dues as an aggressive and respected reporter and editor at a series of publications, including the San Jose Mercury News, following a seven-year stint that began his career at the now-defunct Santa Barbara News-Press morning newspaper.

In 2006, he was caught up in the tidal wave of controversy and conflict between the staff and the paper’s erstwhile owner, triggering its eventual demise via a 2023 bankruptcy. Soon after, he joined the diaspora of local journalists whose lives were variously disrupted and upended by what was dubbed “the News-Press meltdown.” (1).

In a Newsmakers interview shortly before the official announcement of his hiring, Molina choked up with emotion as he recalled that episode, his struggle in the intervening years to scratch together a livelihood, and his strong feelings about an imminent return to a reborn version of the news outlet where he began his professional life.

“I’m super excited and ecstatic to be in this role — it is a coming home for me,” he told Newsmakers, where he has been a regular panelist on our weekly journalism roundtable for nearly a decade.

“The News-Press is where I started (and) it ended so abruptly, and everybody’s life has been so different since then,” he said. “And the opportunity to come back and do something brand new, in a startup form, is just so amazing, and it’s a day that I never really thought was possible.

“I don’t think anyone thought it was possible until the events that happened over the course of the last year. So I’m just sort of pinching myself…reflecting, just constantly thinking about, wow, ‘how did this happen?’”

Our story to date. The billionaire owner of the historic News-Press newspaper (2) declared bankruptcy in 2023, amid vanishing revenue, advertising and subscriptions, owing millions of dollars to creditors in a legal proceeding that is ongoing.

In bankruptcy court, the corporate and non-profit consultant Ben Romo and several of his philanthropist clients bought the domain name, archives, digital and other assets of the defunct paper; last January Romo announced that his group had donated the title and digital assets to Newswell, a non-profit organization working to advance the revival of local news coverage in California and around the nation, which is associated with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.

Since then, Newswell leaders have worked behind the scenes to research the market, and to build out a structure and systems to relaunch the News-Press title as an online news operation.

Its first big public move was to hire Will Belfiore, an energetic young entrepreneur who’d worked in the clean energy industry, as general manager of the new operation. In a twist, Belfiore had played a crucial role in redeeming the bankrupt paper’s digital assets, by warning in a Santa Barbara Independent op-ed that Santa Barbara’s published history was about to be acquired by a Maltese zombie website clickbait farm.

With the hiring of Molina, Newswell now has put in place two key leaders with deep roots in Santa Barbara, who next plan to recruit and hire a team of reporters to provide news and in-depth coverage that adds to the estimable work being done by existing news organizations, including the Independent, Noozhawk, the Montecito Journal, the Coastal View News, Edhat, and Voice Magazine, among other local outlets.

“I have this attitude that this is very much a startup,” Molina said. “We’re going to see what works, what doesn’t work. We’re going to keep evolving and we’re going to make something that fits within the community.”

The elephant in the room. In our conversation, Molina addressed questions and criticisms that a resurrected News-Press would be harmful to existing outlets.

“I read the Independent every day, I read Noozhawk, I read the other outlets in town. There’s room for all of us to do great work because there’s so much news in Santa Barbara that the public needs to know about,” he said.

“That is not a reflection on the ability or the skill of any of the reporters in this town — it’s just that there’s fewer of us” than there were in the heyday of the News-Press, Molina said. “I mean, myself included — I’ve been a reporter. I have not been able to get to all of the stories that I would love to get to on housing, on cannabis, on the environment, on transportation…

“So the idea that the News Press would come back with a staff to be able to enhance the level of accountability journalism in this town, that’s incredible,” he added. “I mean, this is the most exciting journalistic enterprise in America right now. The idea that (Arizona State University) and Newswell are bringing back the Santa Barbara News Press, being run by local people and we’re going to hire local reporters - this is incredibly great for our community. It’s exciting.

“We should all be enthusiastic that more great, solid journalism is coming to Santa Barbara County….There’s room for all of us and we’re going to do tremendous work.”

A bootstrap story. In our wide-ranging discussion, Josh also offered a glimpse of his personal and professional journey, from growing up poor in Goleta to eyeing the military as a Dos Pueblos High School student — before discovering his passion for journalism in a class at City College.

He turned an internship at the old News-Press into a full time job but, after being exiled amid the events of 2006, he survived the contemporaneous collapse of the newspaper industry through gigs that ranged from covering San Jose City Hall to peddling freelance pieces about Mixed Martial Arts fights, with intervening stops at the Pacific Coast Business Times, the Hispanic Business Times and the now-extinct Daily Sound, along with assorted online journalism hustles.

Along the way, he never lost the zeal for his craft, or for telling stories about his community.

“I’ve always loved neighborhood and community reporting and reporting in a small town because that’s where you have the most impact,” he said. “You tell people about what’s happening with a rent stabilization initiative, you tell them about their water rates going up, you tell them about the potholes, the streets, the housing developments. This is what matters. This is what people care about.

“And a more informed local community is going to make better choices about how they live their lives, “ he added. “And ultimately that’s going to make us a greater, stronger county and region.”

Check out our full conversation with newly-named News-Press Editor Josh Molina via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. Our podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, or on Soundcloud here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 5 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on weekends.

1. “Citizen McCaw” is a feature documentary that recounts the events preceding and following the News-Press meltdown. It’s available on the Newsmakers site here.

2. A summary of the storied and colorful history of the News-Press newspaper, which had published continuously since 1868, may be found here.