The ''Santa Maria Sun'' is an American free weekly newspaper that serves

Santa Maria, California Santa Maria (Spanish language, Spanish for "Mary, mother of Jesus, St. Mary") is a city in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Located on the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of California, it is approximately northwest o ...

and

Santa Barbara County Santa Barbara County, officially the County of Santa Barbara (), is a county located in Southern California. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 448,229. The county seat is Santa Barbara, and the largest city is Santa M ...

. Edited by Camillia Lanham, it is published on Thursdays.

History

''The Sun'' was founded in 2000 by Steve Moss, who saw a need for a weekly community newspaper that could act as a “town square where everybody could participate.” Shortly after its founding,

Lompoc, California Lompoc ( ; Chumashan ) is a city in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Located on the Central Coast, its population was 43,834 as of July 2021. Lompoc has been inhabited for thousands of years by the Chumash people, who called t ...

Economic Development Committee member Justin Ruhge contributed a controversial editorial to the Nov. 16 issue. It stated that "Muslims are out to destroy our world." Steve Moss died in 2005. For fifteen years, Ryan Miller edited the ''Sun.'' During the 2005 Michael Jackson trial in Santa Maria, Miller provided local commentary for national and international news outlets. Miller left ''the Sun'' in 2015.

Awards

In 2013, the ''Sun'' won an award for its investigation of a corrections officer's death at the Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc . The sun uncovered a pattern of administrative

malfeasance Misfeasance, nonfeasance, and malfeasance are types of failure to discharge public obligations existing by common law, custom, or statute. The Carta de Logu caused Eleanor of Arborea to be remembered as one of the first lawmakers to set up t ...

and abuse that may have contributed to the death of two corrections officers. In 2017, the ''Sun'' won second place in the General Excellence category in its division of California's Better Newspapers Contest, with judges citing its "mix of coverage of local issues, arts and culture". In 2017, the ''Sun'' took home awards including first place for agricultural reporting, enterprise news reporting,

feature stories A feature story is a piece of non-fiction writing about news covering a single topic in detail. A feature story is a type of soft news, primarily focused on entertainment rather than a higher level of professionalism. The main subtypes are th ...

, and news photography.

References

{{reflist Weekly newspapers published in California Santa Barbara County, California Newspapers established in 2000 2000 establishments in California