I'm relieved and thrilled to see that justice has prevailed in the newspaper wars in Santa Barbara.
It's been four years since I went up to cover the newsroom revolt at the Santa Barbara News-Press against a mercurial and ethically tone deaf owner, Wendy McCaw. I'm fairly certain that New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger regrets having sold her the newspaper, since the wealthy grandee McCaw set set out to run the 
newspaper like her own personal political blotter.
Problem was, the staff wasn't used to taking orders from the publisher.
Jerry Roberts, the editor she had taken on board to lead the place, balked at her tactics. That involved firing reporters who she disagreed with, issuing imperial orders about what stories ought to be covered and generally bulldozing the wall between editorial and advertising.
So McCaw reacted with a vengeance. Her tactics almost always include wielding a lawsuit, and in Roberts' case it was $25 million worth.
I wrote in the New York Times back in 2006:
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"Members of the newsroom, and many former reporters, are at odds with Ms. McCaw over their vote to unionize last fall, which she has so far declined to recognize. The publisher has also stirred broader tension in the community with threats of legal action against local merchants who hung signs sympathetic to the union cause, and she has filed a $25 million claim against Mr. Roberts for breach of contract.
"But the latest twist struck many as a step beyond the antagonisms to this point. In the unsigned article, the newspaper wrote that Ampersand Publishing, the parent company of the News-Press, was seeking to retrieve from police the hard drive of the computer used by Mr. Roberts, 'which contains according to the police more than 15,000 images of child and adult pornography.'"
The pornography thing - a complete chimera - went away, eventually. But Roberts' health, both physical and emotional, have suffered mightily. He countersued, and now he has won.
He writes it about it here on his Facebook page, and the AP writes it up today thusly:
An arbitrator has rejected the Santa Barbara News-Press' $25 million claim against its former editor and ordered the newspaper's owner to pay more than $900,000 in fees stemming from their dispute.
