Based on the size of the headline and the photo that appeared on the front page of the News-Press on Saturday morning, you would have thought that Mike Stoker had won the election for governor, rather than just merely announcing that he's running for the state assembly. (BTW, is anyone ever not "in it to win it?")
Pedro Nava didn't do too badly either in Friday's paper with his announcement that he intends to run for attorney general. And he didn't even show up anywhere in person to tell anyone about his intentions. The announcement was made via e-mail and on his website. That huge close-up of Nava in front of a microphone was a file photo.
Compare that to the failure of the paper to give any coverage at all to Helene Schneider's press conference earlier this year to announce that she was running for mayor of Santa Barbara.
Newest member of the cabal, otherwise known as the News-Press enemies list, is Catherine Remak.
Yes, that's Catherine of Gary and Catherine. The long-time co-host on one of Santa Barbara's popular morning drive-time radio shows is regarded as the sweetest, most inoffensive, on-the-air personality on the town's sweetest, most inoffensive radio station. They don't call it K-LITE for nothing.
Couple Remak's pleasant on-air persona with her frequent emceeing of charitable events on behalf of non-profits and it's easy to conclude that going after Remak is like taking on Mother Teresa.
But on Friday Armstrong was giving her the Tokyo Rose treatment in his op-ed column for having, of all things, exchanged e-mails with Santa Barbara Mayor Marty Blum.
According to Armstrong: "she trades uncivil e-mails about yours truly with the present mayor of Santa Barbara. Ms. Remak in one e-mail had a string of words personally attacking me and basically hoping something bad would happen to me."
Of course, as for whether she really personally attacked him, was uncivil and was wishing him ill, well, we only have Armstrong's word on that since he never actually quoted anything along those lines from the actual e-mails, although he was gloating about having copies of them.
The biggest hoot in all of what Armstrong had to say was his claim that by writing about Remak perhaps he would give her "some much-needed publicity."
The last time I checked, which was for the rating period of about a year ago, K-LITE was killing News-Press Radio (where Armstrong has his own show) in the ratings. News-Press Radio had a mere 1.4% share of the audience compared to the 6.3% share that K-LITE enjoys.
Sounds to me like Armstrong's constant plugging of his own show in his column, hasn't paid off in terms of improving the ratings.
