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Good morning, Santa Barbara ☀️

Here’s what we have for you today:

Mayoral candidates talk budget, electric bikes, immigration and surveillance at forum
“Students do not have to wait until there’s a crisis to ask for support”: Santa Barbara High opens Wellness Center
Transit agencies promote new Amtrak Surfliner service to commuters at Santa Barbara train station event

Joshua Molina

News-Press Editor

Stories you should know about

Newsom signs landmark bill aimed at giving lifeline to struggling California newsrooms (Los Angeles Times)

Gas prices, AI data centers and Trump’s long shadow: Top takeaways from the governor’s race debate (Los Angeles Times)

Tennessee governor pauses future execution after inmate survives lethal injection (New York Times)
After lobbying from child marriage survivors and women’s rights advocates, California bans child marriage (Sacramento Bee)
Asian Americans swung to Trump in 2024. Andy Kim wants to focus on winning them back (Politico)

Newsom backs journalism

Last night I covered a mayoral forum hosted by the Santa Barbara Independent, which practically and technically is a “competing” newspaper. It was the third of four that I have covered (the other one was on back-to-school night and I skipped it, although I assigned the event to News-Press reporter Sofia Wallace).

Some people have asked me why I am covering their election events. The answer is simple. The readers, the audience, the community need to know what’s happening in their city. These are important events and I am a journalist with the privilege of having a reporting and editing job covering the community. The News-Press may have been the only publication to cover all four of their events (It’s possible KEYT was there also. I saw Tracy Lehr and John Palminteri at two of them).

There’s another reason. I want to support my fellow journalists. I am friends with some of the Independent journalists. Some of them I am friendly with. Whether I know them or not, does not matter. We need to support journalism. The truth of the matter is, just about every journalist in this town is overworked and underpaid. We do the work of multiple reporters.

On Wednesday Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will give tax credits to newsrooms in California—equivalent to $20,000 per full-time employee. There’s also money for part-time journalists and incentives to hire new ones. This is landmark legislation aimed at boosting—and saving newsrooms.

Journalism is essential to democracy. If journalists aren’t paying attention to elected officials and high-ranking government officials, a community suffers. We are not police officers and firefighters, I understand that. But we are essential workers. Whether I am covering a council meeting or an election forum, or ribbon-cutting or a feature on an interesting person in the community, I am determined to write with every ounce of who I am.

It’s not for my personal brand. It’s for the readers, the people who don’t have the opportunity and privilege to experience the community the way I do because they have jobs, multiple jobs, and their own pressures of life.

Journalists are here for them.

It’s refreshing to see Newsom, and the bill’s early supporters, including the California Newspaper Publishers Association, supporting a bill that aims to strengthen journalism financially. The equation is simple. More money equals more journalists. More journalism equals more news covered.

I was actually full of joy covering the election forums. I was full of joy when I moderated four forums for the News-Press. (It’s easier to cover them as a journalist than moderate them, btw).

Last night, a community member asked me “Josh, when do you sleep?”

I responded, “I don’t.” But then I explained. “I don’t get a lot of sleep, but it’s OK, because I love what I do. And there’s no way I could do this at this level if I didn’t love it. And actually, journalism doesn’t really feel like work because I love it.”

And that’s true.

Let’s support journalism today, regardless of which organization is putting on the event.

Journalists care about the community. We don’t do this job for the money. We do it because we believe it is the most important job on the planet. Hopefully Newsom’s bill will allow more journalism to happen in all newsrooms.

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