For 26 years, the Sun has pursued thoughtful coverage, welcoming and including all voices

Within a few months of the Sun’s first issue on March 31, 2000, our reporters had written about a downtown Santa Maria in need of change, hazing in local high schools, teen pregnancies, an overcrowded Marian Regional Medical Center, a groundwater rights lawsuit, rural crime, and a lack of music venues in the city.

Most of the stories have come back to our pages again and again. And they will likely return in the future. Recording that history is one of our jobs. It’s part of the vision that we’ve laid out for this publication, which is focused on community journalism and serving the residents of Northern Santa Barbara County.

Since 2000, the Santa Maria Valley’s population has grown by more than 30,000 people. It’s gained school campuses, a county jail, and more box stores and chain restaurants than it probably needed to.

Cannabis is now legal.

Politics is über-polarized.

Ideology, more entrenched.

Social media has changed the way we interact with one another. The COVID-19 pandemic marked us in immeasurable ways. We’ve had countless wildfires, several droughts, a handful of floods, and years marked by way too many homicides. Agricultural labor, housing inequality, homelessness, struggles in education, new politicians, new developments, new businesses—the Sun has covered it all.

**HAZING TERRITORY:** High school freshmen told the Sun that incidents of hazing, such as peeing in lockers, happens regularly. The anecdote was included as part of a June 19, 2000, story about an alleged Righetti High School track team hazing incident that had schools throughout Santa Maria questioning their hazing policies. Credit: File photo by Jeff Greene

Within a few months of our first issue on March 31, 2000, our reporters had written about a downtown Santa Maria in need of change, hazing in local high schools, teen pregnancies, an overcrowded Marian Regional Medical Center, a groundwater rights lawsuit, rural crime, and a lack of music venues in the city.

Most of the stories have come back to our pages again and again. And they will likely return in the future, perhaps with an unfamiliar shape, different faces, new voices, and more creative solutions. Recording that history is one of our jobs. It’s part of the vision that we’ve laid out for this publication, which is focused on community journalism and serving the residents of northern Santa Barbara County.

**WATER WARS:** In the *Sun*’s June 2, 2000, issue, we wrote about a bitter battle between the city of Santa Maria and the Santa Maria Valley Water Conservation District over rights to the valley’s groundwater basin that involved more than 700 litigants. “If the farmers prevail, the pumping of groundwater during times of need could be curtailed,” then City Manager Tim Ness said. “We may not have enough water to supply domestic needs and may have to ration water or find another supplemental source.” Credit: File Photo

In the last 26 years, the way the Sun is made may have changed, but our mission has remained constant. We’ve morphed from mainly worrying about a print product that comes out once a week to producing newsletters, a website, social media accounts, and a print product. Perhaps more evolution is on the horizon, but the vision of our late founder, Steve Moss, still drives the reporting process, how we manage the opinion section, and the way we tell the community’s stories.

He wrote to readers in that first issue about what he envisioned for New Times’ sister paper.

“The Sun and New Times are separate newspapers owned by the same people. But they have a similar purpose: to help readers better understand their respective communities so they can face the challenges ahead with confidence and resolve,” he wrote. “We want to create a portable town square that readers can hold in their hands each week, a place where all viewpoints are invited and welcomed.”

“As a weekly paper, we have the advantage of what I call ‘active repose,’ a quality unattainable by more fast-paced media,” Moss added. “We’re able to look back at the week that was and assist readers in understanding the impact of unfolding events, then bring a thoughtful perspective to the week ahead so readers can more readily partake of it.”

Thoughtful perspectives are sorely needed these days. As is welcoming and inviting all viewpoints.

**WE WANT TO KNOW:** Students in Ann Kollath’s Human Sexuality Class at Allan Hancock College in 2000 said that sex education helps them make better decisions and choices about their life. The *Sun* spoke with Kollath and students in her class for a May 5, 2000, piece about Santa Maria’s high teen pregnancy rates. Credit: File photo

The Sun has done its best not to be harried in its reporting process, not to get sucked into the digital hemisphere of breaking news pressure, flurried social media clickbait, and opinionated journalism. We aim to stay thoughtful in our coverage of the issues that drive northern Santa Barbara County and continue to reflect the breadth of voices in the community.

We’ve been accused of many things in the last handful years, some of which I dare not repeat. I’ve personally been told to shove the paper up my you-know-what—aggressive, right? We’ve been threatened, praised, critiqued, lauded, and accused of being too liberal and too conservative. As long as the responses from our readers run the gamut, I know the Sun is doing its job.

Because we’re not here to please everyone or even to please anyone. We’re here to reflect the community that we serve, and sometimes that includes perspectives that don’t match with your own. And that’s OK. In fact, it’s necessary for the success of a democratic society to debate constructively, to mull over the length and width of an issue, and to hear a diversity of viewpoints before pushing forward collectively, together, into the future.

**LOOKING FOR A STAGE:** “Unless you’re a metal or electronic band, there’s no place to play,” Rick Hossli told the *Sun* for a July 7, 2000, story about music venues in Santa Maria. He said the lack of place to play spurred him to move to San Diego to start a band. Credit: File photo by Jeff Greene

In a world where ideology and angry posts seem to be driving us further apart, the Sun aims to bring the community together through something more constructive. That’s why we publish voices from all sides in our opinion section. That’s why we seek out community members to tell their stories. That’s why we allow ourselves some breathing room before launching into covering something important.

We are here to help you connect to your neighbors, to your culture, to this time we’re living in.

And that’s why you, dear readers, are so important. You are the reason we have been able to weather the economic and political uncertainty of the last several years and why we continue to publish after 26 years. Thanks for being there for us. And I hope we’ve done and will continue to do the same for you.

Editor Camillia Lanham is still older than the Sun. Send anti-aging cream to clanham@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in March 26 – April 2, 2026.