On Wednesday, Newsmakers checked in with Gwyn Lurie, editor in chief of the Montecito Journal, who was keen to talk about the cover story of her paper’s new issue, out April 16.
Penned by journalist and prolific Hollywood writer Mitchell Kriegman, the piece takes a hard look at what Santa Barbara City Hall is doing – or, to be blunt, not doing – about crafting a strategy for pandemic economic recovery. Newsmakers says check it out.
In her editor’s column, which prefaces Mitchell’s deep dive, Lurie quotes iconic capitalist Warren Buffet – “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out” – to help describe the community concern and anxiety that naturally arises from reading about what she calls “the apparent absence of a legitimate partnership between Santa Barbara’s city leadership and its business community.”
“People are afraid,” Gwyn said in our conversation.
After recently speaking about the local economic crisis with Rep. Salud Carbajal and Supervisors Gregg Hart and Das Williams, she said, the paper is convening a virtual meeting of private-public community leaders to start an “out of the box" solutions-focused conversation about short and long-term ways and means of responding to the catastrophic event now threatening to decimate the local economy.
In a conversation Zoombombed by Labradoodle Daisy, Gwyn also discussed the economic injury the virus has inflicted on the Journal’s own advertising base, and the paper's efforts to adapt to crisis conditions with, among other things, home delivery for thousands of residents of Montecito, Summerland and Santa Barbara, who are quarantined under Gov. Newsom’s “shelter in place” order.
Click above for the video of our conversation; the podcast version is here.
JR