Word spread Friday afternoon after Armstrong reportedly met with News-Press owner Wendy McCaw behind closed doors.
Although there were various reports that Armstrong had decided to move out of the area, the exact details of Armstrong’s departure are unknown.
The News-Press published a sentence on the topic on its Web site Friday evening. Details about the resignation were scant, though News-Press insiders say it appeared to be unexpected.
Calls and emails to Armstrong and Human Resources Director Yolanda Apodaca Friday night were unreturned.
Armstrong joined the paper’s staff in 2002 after he worked as an editorial writer for the San Jose Mercury News.
During his time at the News-Press, Armstrong became a lightning rod for controversy. Some community members and elected officials perceived his editorials to be unnecessarily vitriolic and toxic in their tone.
Over the years he frequently criticized Santa Barbara Mayor Marty Blum, Mayoral candidate Helene Schneider, Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, and former state assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, among other targets.
“Don’t you feel like a whole burden has been lifted off our city?” Blum said. “It has been a difficult time these last eight years.”
Blum, who recently appeared on Armstrong’s radio show, heard the news late Friday.
Last year, he wrote columns suggesting that Blum was going to resign, without identifying any of his sources. Blum, who said she never intended to resign, and that such a thought never even occurred in her head, said she took him even less seriously after that.
“I would have hoped he would have said something nice before he left town because he never said anything nice to me,” Blum said.
Since July of 2006, when many of the paper’s top editors and reporters resigned in protest of what they felt was unethical meddling in the newsroom by McCaw, the paper’s owner and publisher, Armstrong has been a vocal champion of McCaw’s rights to run her business as she sees fit.
Armstrong was at the center of turmoil in the newsroom the day several of the editors resigned. When he attempted to escort former News-Press editor Jerry Roberts, who had just resigned, out of the building, many of the reporters got upset that Roberts was being asked to leave the building.
In that moment, then-Metro Editor Jane Hulse, who was typically low key, famously yelled out, "Fuck you, Travis, haven't you done enough already?"
In the wake of the mass resignation, a successful attempt by the newspaper’s thinned staff to form a union led to Armstrong writing columns in opposition to the Teamsters and their tactics.
In his, and the paper’s official editorial columns, he often bemoaned the union’s tactics.
Despite the many enemies he made in the community, Armstrong had his share of supporters, who believed that he was a necessary voice in the community, pointing out perceived problems in government, and acting as a voice for some neighborhoods.
A person who considered himself a “good friend” of Armstrong’s, but spoke on condition of anonymity, didn’t know of the resignation until being told by a Daily Sound reporter.
Armstrong also made headlines himself when in 2006 he was arrested and convicted for drunken driving. He was pulled over by the Santa Barbara Police Department after going the wrong way on a one way street in downtown Santa Barbara.