You might recall my post of last week about the questions News-Press editorial page editor Travis Armstrong posed to Rick Caruso's spokesperson Matt Middlebrook regarding Caruso's ownership of the Miramar Hotel and his efforts to drum up community support for his plan to develop it.
One of Armstrong's questions was, "Why hasn't Rick Caruso been the kind of caretaker of this property that Mr. Warner and Mr. Schrager were while they owned it?"
Fact is, when Ian Schrager of Studio 54 fame owned the property there was a lot of consternation in Montecito over his neglect of the vacated hotel. Armstrong wouldn't have had to go beyond the News-Press archives to find evidence of it.
Can Armstrong's memory really be that short? Or did an accurate recollection of what kind of a caretaker Schrager was not fit in with his agenda?
According to Santa Barbara's Blog, Wendy's war against the Teamsters Union has taken the form of an ad campaign in the News-Press claiming that the union is "bullying" the paper's advertisers.
The Daily Sound, covered the departure of its long-time photographer Janelle Holcombe with an article on the front page of the paper, to which one of my readers Rick Blain responded:
Wow! A front page article??? You mean she didn't get escorted out of the building when she gave notice?? What has the world come to?
Talk about how soon we forget.
The News-Press has hired a new reporter to cover sports. His name is Alex Pavlovic, who formerly covered sports for the Daily Nexus at UCSB. He starts September 1.
Hopefully he'll know the difference between a decathlon and a triathlon. A headline in Tuesday's News-Press read "S.B. decathlon athlete hospitalized." The lead went on to say, "A San Diego psychologist who broke her neck over the weekend while participating in the Santa Barbara Triathlon . . ."
Well if Wendy McCaw can be one taco short of a combination plate I guess the Santa Barbara Triathlon can be seven events short of a decathlon.
And no, Melanja Jones does not cover polo for the News-Press. Although an article in Tuesday's paper on the Bombardier Pacific Coast Open tournament carried a by-line that identified her as a News-Press staff writer, she's actually affiliated with the Santa Barbara Polo Club.
Coming soon to a web browser near you is PresidioSports.com. It's being started by former News-Press reporters Blake Dorfman and John Dvorak. A bevy of other former News-Press sports writers will be contributing to it including Barry Punzal, Mike Traphagen, Dan Shiells, Dave Loveton and Chic Perkins.
Formal announcement and launch of the website is expected within a short time.
