It’s been a long haul for the News-Press newsroom since last July, when seven editors resigned in protest because Wendy McCaw, the owner and co-publisher, was using the newspaper to curry favor with her friends and business associates.

The newsroom exodus has now swelled to 40 people, including us, the eight reporters who were fired by McCaw. It’s been hard to lose a steady job, a job we loved and excelled in. But it’s been truly painful to watch the developments at the venerable News-Press in recent months.

Many people have asked us whether the paper will survive. We don’t know the answer to that question. But rather than waste time in speculation, the eight of us have decided to get back to work and launch this Web site, SantaBarbaraNewsroom.com, as a daily online source of local news. We hope to keep the site going until we are reinstated at the News-Press, where we were illegally fired for trying to obtain a union contract. The general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board will prosecute the company so that we can get our jobs back, but the wheels of justice turn slowly. McCaw is bogging down the courts with legal tricks, and it may be months before we are able to return to the News-Press.

In the meantime, we pledge to bring you fair and honest online reporting that is enterprising, intelligent and up-to-date. We’re seasoned journalists with years of experience in the field.

In order of seniority, we are John Zant, covering sports; Melinda Burns, regional affairs; Dawn Hobbs, criminal justice; Tom Schultz, city of Goleta and health; Anna Davison, science and the environment; Rob Kuznia, education; Barney McManigal, county of Santa Barbara; and Melissa Evans, city of Santa Barbara and religion.

We’ll try to post at least one substantial local story every day on this site, along with some local briefs and a photo or two. We will occasionally post some video, too. This way of providing the news is new for us, and we don’t promise it will all come off smoothly. We welcome your suggestions. We know that you are some of the most sophisticated readers anywhere, and we will do our best to keep you informed. As for the News-Press mess, we’ll write about it as commentators.

We would like to thank our sponsors, the Graphic Communications Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, for helping us set up this Web site. We in the News-Press newsroom voted 33-6 last fall to join the Teamsters in hopes of restoring journalistic integrity to the paper through a fair employment contract. We faced a challenge from McCaw, and although a judge has ruled that our union won the election fair and square, we are still waiting for contract negotiations to begin.

We are grateful to the thousands of supporters who have cancelled their News-Press subscriptions and attended our rallies and picket lines. We will continue to ask for your support. Also, we thank those advertisers who have stopped doing business with McCaw until she obeys the law.

Finally, we would like to thank the Santa Barbara Independent, Daily Sound, Santa Barbara Channels, KEYT, KSBY, Craig Smith’s Blog, BlogaBarbara, Edhat, our citizen videographers and the national newspapers and magazines that are reporting the truth about the News-Press scandal.

To all those who support freedom of the press: please join us in this, our next adventure. Together, we will prevail.

The staff of SantaBarbaraNewsroom.com