Santa Barbara Nine get award

Nine of the journalists who resigned from the Santa Barbara News-Press rather than go along with the questionable decrees of owner Wendy McCaw will receive an Ethics in Journalism tribute later this month. The Society of Professional Journalists will make a little fuss for them at its national convention in Chicago Aug. 26. Remaining News-Press staffers yesterday filed with the NLRB as a formal step toward forcing a union election at the paper.

Closer to home: Looks like the union push is picking up momentum at the Los Angeles Times Olympic plant, where most of the papers are printed. The blog by a pressman there also says that LA Observed is still blocked on the plant's Internet-connected computers.