Tag archives: local journalism

Journalist Trifecta
By Montecito Journal   |   February 4, 2021

It takes a good interviewer and writer and selection of a worthy subject to produce a meaningful and touching article.  Leslie A. Westbrook achieved all three for her piece, “At Home with Lou” (August 21-28, 2021). She focused on interviews with the prize-winning, former senior White House Correspondent for The Washington Post, Lou Cannon, and […]

Zooming it in, yes. Phoning it in, no.
By Gwyn Lurie   |   January 28, 2021

Someone once said, “Journalism is what somebody doesn’t want you to know. The rest is advertising.” I find that quote not just clever, but true, and precisely why local journalism is so vital. With so much overwhelming national news, not to mention two diametrically opposed sets of news to choose from, both biased, I often […]

Letters to the Editor
By Montecito Journal   |   July 23, 2020

Our County… Our Black Hole So, Bari Weiss (NYT Op-ed writer/editor) recently resigned. What I found sad about her departure was her self-described truth: “Twitter is not on the masthead of the NYT… but it has become its ultimate editor.” This unfortunate reality is even more acute in Santa Barbara where the flames of legitimate […]

A Bias for Bias
By Gwyn Lurie   |   January 23, 2020

A story you may have missed while you were busy celebrating the holidays was the December 31 closing of the gargantuan (half million square foot) “Newseum” – just steps from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue – after 11 years and ten million visitors. Various news outlets decried the poignancy and irony of the 450 […]

Time To Move On
By James Buckley   |   November 21, 2019

It was summer 1995, and our predecessor, Montecito Life, had stopped publishing the year before. I waited six months to see if publisher Jesse Roth would be able to resuscitate his ten-year-old paper and when it became clear he was not going to, I began to put together the first 16-page issue of “The Gold […]

Dear Montecito Community,
By Gwyn Lurie   |   November 21, 2019

Gwyn Lurie is a local chair collector. She chaired the MUS School Board for five years, she co-chairs the Santa Barbara Human Rights Watch Committee, she is a founding member of The Partnership for Resilient Communities (TPRC) and was Chair of the Santa Barbara County Child Welfare Safety Net Task Force. Gwyn has spent enough […]