Posted on March 27 at 7:13 a.m.

Can't believe you didn't mention the vicious bank robber named Lee in the last few months' Rex Morgan, M.D. strips.

On Dog Eat Dog, or K-9 Kannibalism

Posted on January 20 at 2:38 p.m.

I'd like you to remember the other issues from last year. Oh, that's right, you can't, because they were fluff like "Spring Fashion Preview" and "Fall Fashion Preview" and "Made in Santa Barbara" and "Summer Camp Guide" and "Surfing Issue" . . . etc. etc.

That you can list from memory the serious stories produced in a year by what you say is one of the biggest staffs in its field speaks for itself, don't you think?

What I want is a local newspaper that reports the news. Everybody bags on Wendy and the N-P because she turned it into her shill rag: what, pray tell is the difference between that and the Independent? The bottom line is that neither the N-P nor the Indy comes close to fulfilling its duty to be a community resource, and the community is the worse for it.

On My New Stud

Posted on January 20 at 8:51 a.m.

The Independent had a chance to rise to the occasion and become a real newspaper -- THE real newspaper in town after Wendy's implosion. They didn't drop the ball; they never picked up the ball.

Hiring Barney Brantingham and his fluff was one thing. The man is popular and his column is a valid part of a community newspaper. This woman Roshell is a joke, however, and John Zant may be an experienced sports editor but since when has the Independent covered sports? Nope, this was just a cheap and dirty way to try to steal some of the N-P's readership without actually having to do what the N-P once did: report the news to the community.

Axe to grind? Yep. I wrote hard news for the Independent for more than five years, and when I left it was in mutual disgust as the paper was booming economically and in page count, and rather than making more space and resources available for news, chose to downplay downplaying news for columns on horses and such. Degeneration continues: now there's "Peeps" for chrissakes, as well as a 'Cito blurb, one for horses, lesbians, independently wealthy world-traveling surfers, on and on.

The Indy could have risen at least to the level of other "alt-weekly" papers (check out any one, from SLO to Monterey to OC or just about anywhere), and if it had the gumption, to become the real newspaper of record in SB. Instead it's more of the same: unpaid interns, fluff columnists who'll take $50 a column because they get their real kicks from seeing their name in print, and news and news reporters be damned.

Ukelelegirl, I know I don't have to read the Independent. I don't -- or at least, I read the content that interests me in 5 - 10 minutes. But that doesn't mean I can't mourn its failure to live up to its responsibility as a so-called provider of information to our town. With the plethora of zombie media available to you from your Cable TV tuner to the blogosphere to the pages of "Hello!" or "Parade" magazine, couldn't you turn elsewhere to get what you obviously want and let the newspaper print news?

I don't hate "Starshine" Roshell -- I simply find her writing insipid, vacuous and a waste of space that could have some information in it one could use. And that she is now imparting her wisdom and experience to teenage journo students at SBCC does not, let's face it, bode well for greater availability of serious news reporting in Santa Barbara.

On My New Stud

Posted on January 18 at 8:58 p.m.

Aren't you embarrassed to be teaching a creative non-fiction class at our local college when this is the drivel you produce week in and week out?

All your friends with their warnings about your nose-ring, and not one of them could warn you that NOBODY CARES whether you pierce yourself or not?

One thing is Marianne hiring every cast-off from the News-Suppress to tweak Wendy, but what with your "syndicated" column (syndicated where, on your website?), the "available" podcasts of you reading this tripe and now SBCC's inexplicable decision to expose impressionable young aspiring journalists to your "expertise," you seem to think you are really a writer.

Make no mistake, "Starshine," you ain't no writer. You ain't even no Sandy Banks, to whose inanities you appear to aspire, and, like, hello-o (hate to be the one to break it to you, girlfriend, but since you probably don't know Marianne that well): if you hadn't been Wendy fodder you wouldn't have this little gig helping to drag the Independent further down into the gutter of TV-zombie vacuousness.

On My New Stud