There was a time if top-level management of a newspaper mistreated staff, acted capriciously, or unethically, or otherwise made employment at said paper professionally or personally unbearable, there might be a bit of a local stink when a group of reporters and/or editors quit, and maybe a story in E&P, but the issue would die quickly and many potential replacement hires would never even know about the dust up.

Today, you have the Internet, where the story lives on in blogs for days afterwards. These blogs are archived and indexed by search engines.

The Santa Barbara News-Press has posted four job openings on JournalismJobs.com — Here’s a sample.

I can’t imagine taking a job at the NP under the current ownership. And I have to wonder who would:

• Someone who doesn’t follow media news.
• Someone who has such limited job prospects, he doesn’t care
• Someone not using a search engine to research a potential employer

A reporter or editor who is that dense isn’t likely to make a significant contribution to quality journalism.

The NP will a long time recovering from this, if ever, and probably only if Wendy McCaw sells the paper.