For over 155 years, the News-Press has served Santa Barbara and the Central Coast, telling the story of a people and place. Today, the trusted daily paper you grew up with has been reinvented as a nonprofit, start-up newsroom rededicated to serving our community.
We are rebuilding as a modern local news outlet, committed to our same historical values of truth, fairness and dogged reporting. This gives us the opportunity to be innovative and to meet our audience where they are, ensuring essential, high-quality journalism reaches you in the format you want.
Join us as we write the next chapter.
Our Team
William Belfiore, General Manager
Will Belfiore is a fourth-generation Santa Barbaran and wannabe reporter who grew up reading the Santa Barbara News-Press. Following a lackluster series of bylines in college while a student reporter, he began his career in renewable energy and hopscotched from Milan to Los Angeles to New York City with several start-ups.
After the News-Press’ bankruptcy filing in July 2023, Belfiore helped kick off a local effort to acquire the paper’s complex assets and stave off a competing effort by a predatory foreign bidder. The home team won the day, and the rest is history.
Belfiore is forever thankful to the community for the opportunity to rebuild our hometown paper. It’s not every day one gets to run a 157-year-old start-up.
He can be reached at william.belfiore@newspress.com
For more than 25 years, Joshua Molina has been one of the Central Coast’s most dedicated and prolific reporters. A South Coast native who grew up between Goleta and Santa Barbara, he’s reported on just about every local issue you can think of, and a couple you can’t.
In 1995, while a student at Santa Barbara City College, Molina took an internship with the News-Press — and a career was born. In 1999 he joined the staff full time, cutting his teeth on the Latino, health and City Hall beats. He was among the youngest participants in the 2006 Santa Barbara News-Press staff walkouts, which received international attention, and left the paper that same year.
Refusing to hang it up, Molina went on to report for a raft of state and local outlets, including the San Jose Mercury News, Pacific Coast Business Times, Hispanic Business Magazine, Santa Barbara Daily Sound and Noozhawk. He has taught journalism as an adjunct professor at California State University, Northridge and for the last 15 years at SBCC.
Along the way, he married his wife, with whom he shares two incredible kids, and found time for yet more journalism via SB Talks with Josh Molina.
After 20 years away, Molina considers it the honor of a lifetime to be able to return to the news outlet that gave him his start — the newspaper he never wanted to leave in the first place.
He can be reached at jmolina@newspress.com
Jerry Roberts, Advisory Board Member
Jerry Roberts is a political columnist, veteran journalist, biographer and former editor and publisher of the News-Press, serving the newspaper from May 2002 to July 2006. Prior, he had a 25-year career at the San Francisco Chronicle, including five years as managing editor.
Roberts led a local revitalization of the News-Press before unwillingly becoming a central figure in a high-profile community struggle with the outlet’s then-owner over the editorial independence and journalistic integrity of the newsroom. His eventual ouster from the News-Press precipitated a mass employee exodus and years-long community struggle in solidarity with the displaced journalists.
For their actions, he and fellow News-Press staffers were honored with an Ethics in Journalism Award from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2006 and the Ancil Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism from the University of Oregon in 2007.
For the past 10 years, he and his creative partner, public television veteran Hap Freund, have produced Newsmakers with Jerry Roberts, a video roundtable featuring a panel of leading local journalists discussing the week’s top news stories.
Melinda Burns is an investigative reporter with over 40 years of experience covering topics of immigration, water, science and environment, including a prior 21 year career with the News-Press.
Burns previously taught as a bilingual teacher in Los Angeles in the early 1980s before starting with the Los Angeles Times, first as an intern and then as a reporter-trainee. She joined the Santa Barbara News-Press in 1985, the same day that the New York Times Co. took ownership of the paper.
In 2000, the Times fatefully sold the News-Press to local billionaire Wendy McCaw, and six years later five top editors–including Jerry Roberts–resigned in protest of newsroom interference by the owner. In the wake of a subsequent newsroom vote to join the Teamsters, McCaw unfairly fired Burns and eight other reporters, all union activists.
Burns and her colleagues led a community-wide boycott of the News-Press in support of workers’ rights and journalistic integrity, and readers responded, cancelling subscriptions en masse.
Since this time, Burns has continued to cover local news in-depth as a freelancer. In 2017, as a community service, she started working without pay, sending her stories simultaneously to multiple publications. Today, she’s delighted to be back as a paid writer for her old paper and is pleased that, as a nonprofit, the News-Press’ stories are freely republishable by all outlets.
Patricia Stark is Professor Emerita of Journalism at Santa Barbara City College, where she trained generations of journalists, including Josh Molina and Tom Schultz, now News-Press colleagues.
An alumna of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Patricia worked as a daily newspaper reporter in the East San Francisco Bay Area. She covered education and county government for the Contra Costa Times, winning awards for in-depth profiles and investigations.
Her first stab at journalism was as an editor and entertainment reporter for SBCC’s student newspaper, The Channels. A summer internship at the Santa Barbara News-Press followed.
After her years in the Bay Area, she returned to SBCC to teach journalism, chair the department, and advise the student newspaper where she got her start. Under her tenure, Patricia’s students and their publication won prestigious awards from state, regional and national press associations in all areas of journalism—news, feature and opinion writing, photography and videography.
She’s thrilled to be back reporting for the News-Press and helping to launch this exciting new journalistic venture.
Patricia enjoys a long and happy marriage to her husband, Bill. Her two sons, Will and Luke, attended Santa Barbara public schools. A longtime Mesa resident, she loves swimming at Los Baños pool and assorted beaches and travels every chance she gets.
Joy Martin, Contributing Writer
Joy Martin is an award-winning journalist and writer based in Santa Barbara. A Georgia native, she earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing with a journalism emphasis from Pepperdine University, where she was named a Randall Scholar and served as captain of the Women’s Swimming and Diving Team.
She was previously associate editor of Malibu Times Magazine, overseeing long-form features, and has written for The Malibu Times and Top 100 Magazine, among other outlets. She later completed graduate work in Pepperdine’s Writing for Screen & Television program and has advised global consumer and lifestyle brands on sales and marketing strategy for over 15 years.
Tom Schultz, Contributing Writer
Tom Schultz is a freelance writer and editor based in the Santa Ynez Valley. He worked at the Santa Barbara News-Press from 1998 to 2007 as a staff reporter—covering breaking news, government, health care, education, science, business, lifestyles, and more, including the occasional obituary.
Schultz’s journalism career began at the Santa Barbara City College student newspaper, The Channels—followed by a News-Press internship during the Summer of 1995. Before he graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a bachelor’s degree in print journalism, Schultz also interned at The Hartford Courant, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Los Angeles Times Metro, Valley, and Washington, D.C., newsrooms.
Schultz has worked as a marketing writer, editor, and content manager for companies focused on learning content and learning technology platforms including Lynda.com, LinkedIn, and Degreed.
Chris Woodyard, Contributing Writer
Chris Woodyard is an award-winning veteran journalist and blogger. Before joining the Santa Barbara News-Press, he was the Los Angeles bureau chief for USA Today and has worked as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Associated Press, Las Vegas Sun and other major news outlets.
His diverse career has included a stint as a Washington correspondent and several foreign reporting trips. Most of his career has been as a general assignment reporter with extensive coverage of Southern California news, including wildfires in Santa Barbara County. Most recently, he was a reporter for Stocktonia.org, a nonprofit news site covering Stockton, California.
Aston Smith is an award-winning video journalist, videographer, and photographer with a background in documentary production, sports videography, and visual storytelling. Born in Australia and raised in Santa Barbara, California, he began his journey into videography and journalism in 2021 through Dos Pueblos High School’s nationally recognized broadcast news program, DPNews.
Smith is currently studying journalism and communications at Santa Barbara City College. When not working on videos, he can be found sailing or surfing. He is a former US Optimist National Team member, is active in competitive college sailing, and coaches at the Santa Barbara Youth Sailing Foundation.
Anika Brodnansky is an award-winning journalist with experience in investigative, sports, and political reporting. Born in Stockton, California, she began her journalism career in 2023 at Santa Barbara City College as a reporter for the student-run newspaper, The Channels. There she earned multiple statewide awards recognizing her writing and reporting.
After completing one associate’s degree in journalism and two more in communication, Brodnansky is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Communication and Professional Writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Outside of reporting, she enjoys spending time at the beach with her Golden Retriever, Bailey, and being outdoors. She is a former competitive swimmer and now spends her time kickboxing, going to the gym, and running with Bailey.
Ray Ford is a Santa Barbara–based writer covering wildfires, public lands, and outdoor recreation in Santa Barbara County and Southern California. He is the author of numerous books and maps on regional hiking, backpacking, and mountain biking, including Santa Barbara Day Hikes, Trails of the San Rafael Wilderness, Santa Barbara Mountain Biking, and Santa Barbara Wildfires. His writing documents both the history of wildfires in the region and the ways fire, landscape, and community intersect over time.
Ford has reported on every major wildfire of the last 30 years in Santa Barbara County, focusing on fire behavior, response, and recovery. He also brings decades of experience documenting trails and backcountry access. In addition to his writing, Ford spent more than 30 years teaching social studies in the Santa Barbara Unified School District, where he developed and led an outdoor education program for high school students.
Lynn Montgomery was born in a honky-tonk on Route 66, where her dad played lead guitar to the fawning Hells Angels. With bona fides like this, it’s no wonder she’s drawn to stories with grit and humor and characters who can make you laugh and cry.
Montgomery is an award-winning writer who won an LA Emmy for her documentary on the failings of the Child Protective Custody System and a Writers Guild Award for her Showtime series starring Shelly Duvall. She wrote for the LA Weekly as well as The Big Bear Grizzly, where she penned the column, “Storytellers and Oldtimers.” One of her favorite jobs was writing and producing a nationally syndicated public affairs radio show, which aired on more than 100 stations. More recently she directed the documentary, “Amazing Grace,” about Santa Barbara’s celebrated musician, Grace Fisher, who composes symphonies and paintings with only the use of a mouth-stick.
Montgomery has lived in Santa Barbara County for over 30 years. You can find her on Substack and she currently writes a News-Press column inspired by William Blake’s famous poem:
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour …
Robert H. Sulnick is a life-long environmentalist. He co-founded American Oceans Campaign with Ted Danson, serving as CEO for 10 years, and was a member of the Green Group coalition of leading national environment organizations. As an environmental lawyer and law professor, he represented victims of the Bhopal, India, gas disaster and the community of Casmalia.
As an advocate, he served as environmental director of the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos in New Mexico, head of a consortium working to restore the Rio Grande and CEO of a California coalition working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and respond to drought. He was a partner at the Santa Barbara environmental consulting firm, Environmental Problem Solving Enterprises, which worked with industry to develop and implement climate change-mitigating technologies.
He has been a columnist for more than a decade.
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