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The controversial owner of a Santa Barbara newspaper has sued the author of a magazine article critical of the paper's management, alleging it defamed the paper.
The lawsuit calls the American Journalism Review article by Chapman University journalism professor Susan Paterno "nothing but a biased, false and misleading diatribe" against Ampersand Publishing LLC, the holding company of the paper's billionaire co-publisher Wendy McCaw, which owns the Santa Barbara News-Press. The suit, filed Dec. 12 in Orange County Superior Court, seeks unspecified damages.
Howard King, Paterno's attorney, characterized the suit as an attempt to intimidate journalists who write critical articles about the paper and its owner, and said he planned to seek its dismissal in January.
"Unless they revoked the 1st Amendment over the weekend, I don't think they have much of a chance," said the Century City attorney, who said the article was vetted by an outside lawyer before publication. He said the lawsuit was "a message to any reporter out there: 'If you're thinking of doing a critical story on this newspaper or its owners, you better...