Thanks in large part to the internet, news is transmitted at lightning speed these days. If only the technology and back-end work needed to move it were so simple and efficient.
In the fall of 2019, Noozhawk was recruited to join Newspack, a project of WordPress.com in partnership with the Google News Initiative, The Lenfest Institute, the Knight Foundation and ConsenSys, among other journalism and high-tech heavy hitters.
The concept is concise, with Newspack providing small news media operations like ours with a cost-efficient website accompanied by key technology and business solutions.
The aim is to lessen the burden from web development and maintenance expenses — one of our biggest financial commitments after our employees — so that we can stay focused on our professional journalism, business growth and revenue generation.
At the time, we already had several major initiatives of our own scheduled for the first quarter of 2020 so we were allowed to defer our prestigious opportunity until midyear. But then, well, COVID-19 happened.
The next nine months were a blur, but the transition work resumed in earnest last fall. Now it looks as if we’re on track to officially switch over sometime in March, with on-the-job training and troubleshooting on a Noozhawk mirror website in late February.
Tentatively, of course.
We’re excited about what this means for the future of Noozhawk as we continue to stretch our wings as the leading source of local news and information in Santa Barbara County.
Among the anticipated advantages will be a more inviting and interactive display of in-depth original reporting. Our Brooke Holland is working on one such project, a coronavirus series as part of her data fellowship at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.
As we move forward, we plan to enlist a small group of Noozhawk readers to test-drive our new site for critiques, feedback and suggestions. Our own goal, however, is to relaunch with a site that may look slightly different but that is otherwise as convenient and familiar for you to navigate as it is now.
Now more than ever, trusted and reliable news and information are vital tools for our community and for you. Noozhawk delivers what you need 24/7, and I’m asking you to become a member of our Hawks Club so we can continue to make that happen.
Your contribution, at any amount, makes a huge difference for our small, locally owned business.
According to our Google Analytics, Noozhawk had an audience of 129,552 readers this past week.
What follows is my recap of the Top 5 stories you were reading, along with my own take on them.
Trigger warning: This is my opinion column, and I have several this week.
Contrary to what Big Tech would have you believe, it’s still a free country, however, which means you’re free to agree — or disagree — with me. Email your letters to the editor to news@noozhawk.com.
Thank you for your support.
1. Santa Barbara County Reports Record-Shattering 779 New COVID-19 Cases
Santa Barbara County set another unwanted record Jan. 10 with 779 new COVID-19 cases reported. The previous record — 512 — had been set just three days before.
The surge of coronavirus infections has frustrated county Public Health Department officials, who have seen the local caseload continue to soar while hospital intensive-care unit capacity has been mired at zero percent.
The disheartening numbers have been stubbornly consistent even as the county enters the sixth week of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s three-week stay-at-home order to turn things around.
As our Brooke Holland reported Jan. 14, there have been 23,184 COVID-19 cases logged locally since the contagion was first detected in the county 10 months ago. Of that number, authorities say, 223 people have died.
2. No Motive Revealed as Search Continues for Suspect in Double Shooting Near Goleta
More than a week ago, on Jan. 7, our Tom Bolton broke the story that two people had been shot — at midday in broad daylight — while they sat in a parked car in the 600 block of neatly ordered Burtis Street near Goleta.
The victims apparently were discovered by a neighborhood kid who ran to the office of nearby Hollister ELEMENTARY School to report the crime.
Santa Barbara County sheriff’s Lt. Erik Raney said deputies and emergency personnel quickly responded to the scene and found one man dead in the car and a second man with severe wounds.
The search for the gunman — described as white or Hispanic in his early 20s with dark hair, and on foot — involved an hours-long manhunt with shelter-in-place orders for several residential neighborhoods south of Hollister Avenue, between Turnpike Road and Patterson Avenue, a helicopter circling overhead and K-9 teams.
Early the next day, Raney told Tom that the suspect was “still at large” but that investigators “do not believe that the general public is at risk.”
He reiterated what he had said the night before, that a motive had not been determined.
Although Raney could not yet divulge identities, he said the homicide victim was a 19-year-old local resident and the survivor was a 19-year-old Isla Vista resident, who was in critical condition at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
It wasn’t until Jan. 12 that sheriff’s spokeswoman Raquel Zick identified the dead man as Enzo Marino Rastelli.
And that’s basically it. Judging from the emails and phone calls I’ve been receiving from neighborhood residents, I’m not the only one who finds the silence … less than reassuring.
Rastelli was a student at Santa Barbara City College and enrolled in the School of Culinary Arts & Hotel Management. He was described by his aunt, Alaina Rastelli, as an avid snowboarder and surfer who “brought levity everywhere he went and with whomever he was around.”
Funeral services are pending, and a family friend established a GoFundMe account to help with expenses. Click here to make an online donation.
3. Santa Barbara County Could Start Vaccinating People Age 65 and Up Next Week
Late last month, managing editor Giana Magnoli asked our readers to send us their questions about the rollout of the long-awaited, eagerly anticipated coronavirus vaccine. We’ve been inundated with questions — really good questions, I might add.
Giana has been getting the answers and we published the first installment of the responses on Jan. 14.
The overwhelming theme of the questions was sadly basic. No. 1? “How do I know when and where I can get my vaccine shots?”
When the public doesn’t know that, after we’ve been grappling with the biggest public health threat of our lifetime, there may be no more damning indictment of California’s mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis — from start to finish. I mean, it’s not like there was no advance warning that a vaccine was on its way.
The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department put together a vaccination prioritization schedule with five phases of convoluted connections and conditions. The result is about as logical as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s comically scripted “reopening” plan for the state’s beleaguered economy.
Why is it so complicated? Why not have two tiers? One for anyone over age 65, health-care workers, and people under 65 with certain medical conditions. And the second tier for … everyone else?
This being California, nothing can ever be that rational. But as Giana reported Jan. 13, the state seems to be coming around as it scrambles to fulfill Newsom’s repeated promise that 1 million Californians would be vaccinated by Jan. 15. As of Jan. 14, he reportedly was only a half-million shots short.
Fortunately, the county Public Health Department has been diligently working through its progression, and Public Health director Van Do-Reynoso said the first priority group is almost complete. That will clear the way for distribution to the general public over age 65 beginning as soon as next week.
In the spring, she added, the county plans to launch outreach campaigns and will set up mass vaccination clinics using drive-through, walk-up and appointment-only sites.
4. Restaurants Rebel Against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Outdoor Dining Ban
With their dreams and financial futures wilting before their eyes, increasingly desperate restaurants are pushing back against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s likely interminable ban on outdoor dining.
You’ll recall Newsom shut down outdoor dining as part of his Dec. 7 stay-at-home order, which essentially is his only plan for reversing coronavirus-related hospitalizations. The decision has left most restaurants hanging on by their fingertips.
Restaurant owners say their industry is being unfairly blamed for the explosion of caseloads throughout California, including the Ohio-sized Southern California region that includes Santa Barbara County.
They maintain there is neither science nor data linking the transmission of COVID-19 to the practice of eating outside under safe and separated conditions recommended by no less than public health authorities.
Gene Montesano — owner of several popular Santa Barbara restaurants, including Lucky’s Steakhouse, Tre Lune Ristorante-Bar, Joe’s Café and D’Angelo Bakery — has taken his complaints public with prominent signage challenging the prohibition.
His point, as I’ve been making since the start of the crisis almost a year ago, is that the dire economic consequences of the coronavirus are as real and serious as the devastating public health impacts.
“All of the people who are making decisions, they are getting paid,” Montesano told our Josh Molina. “They are not feeling any of the pain.
“Maybe they would like to not earn any money and see how that goes.”
Mayor Cathy Murillo is empathetic but notes that the current surge complicates the City of Santa Barbara’s immediate ability to do more to help business than it already has. The sudden spike in cases “is really frightening,” she said.
Mitchell Sjerven, owner of bouchon santa barbara, said Newsom and other government officials must provide and communicate a reasonable timeline for when restaurants can reopen rather than lurching from one abrupt decision to the next.
“This yo-yo effect wreaks havoc,” he said, referring to the complexities of staffing, menus, food storage and the like.
On Jan. 11, the six Santa Barbara County chambers of commerce launched a united multimedia public awareness campaign highlighting the personal toll the lockdown is taking on their members employees’ and their families.
Kristen Miller, president and CEO of the 2,100-member Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce, acknowledged the health threats but said the economic damage affects far more than business.
“We stand by our business members who are desperately protesting for better policies,” she said.
The South Coast chamber partnered on the campaign with the Santa Maria Valley, Buellton, Lompoc Valley, Santa Ynez and Solvang chambers of commerce.
5. Jeannine’s Restaurant and Bakery Closes Permanently in Downtown Santa Barbara
COVID-19’s economic catastrophe has claimed another victim: Jeannine’s Restaurant & Bakery at 15 E. Figueroa St. in the heart of downtown Santa Barbara.
“You don’t fly a plane when you have two passengers,” owner Alison Hardey told our Josh Molina. “The costs don’t make sense. You have to at some point face reality.”
She’s not wrong, but her analogy is ironic. Commercial airlines can still fly their airplanes packed full with passengers sitting elbow to elbow while restaurants aren’t even allowed to use a handful of socially distanced tables in the open air outside.
For the last 15 years, Jeannine’s has been a mainstay of La Arcada Plaza, popular with downtown workers and tourists, judges and jurists, and government employees at the nearby County Administration Building complex. In short, the kinds of people who are just no longer around with any regularity — if at all.
Fortunately for Hardey and her staff, the Jeannine’s in Montecito will soon reopen for takeout service at 1253 Coast Village Road, and sister stores at 3607 State St. in Santa Barbara and 7060 Hollister Ave. in Goleta’s Hollister Village Plaza will reopen if the outdoor dining ban is ever lifted.
• • •
Last Year on Noozhawk
What was our most-read story this time last year? BizHawk: Restaurants Süp & Jüs in Goleta, Due Lune in Santa Barbara Close Up Shop.
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Bill Macfadyen’s Story of the Week
Whip up some mashed potatoes and have at it: CIA’s Entire Collection of Declassified UFO Documents Is Now Available to Download.
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Best of Bill’s Instagram
My Instagram feed was lit up by the spotlight from Montecito’s third annual #raisingourlight ceremony remembering the victims of the deadly flash flooding and debris flow on Jan. 9, 2018. #rip
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Watch It
The rest of you may scream for ice cream but, true to form, this Alaskan malamute prefers to howl. HT to my friend, Dave Bemis.
(Tierre Christopher video)
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— Bill Macfadyen is Noozhawk’s founder and publisher. Contact him at wmacfadyen@noozhawk.com, follow him on Instagram: @bill.macfadyen, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
