Longtime Chronicle political reporter and managing editor Jerry Roberts will be roasted March 13 in San Francisco to benefit a legal defense fund set up to help him and other journalists who are being sued by Santa Barbara newspaper publisher and billionaire Wendy McCaw. Roberts worked for McCaw for six years. He resigned last July 6 along with several other reporters and editors at the Santa Barbara News Press over newsroom intererence by McCaw. Roberts, who is fighting non-Hodgkins lymphoma, is also battling a $25 million lawsuit filed by McCaw. Roberts and the other journalists targeted by McCaw are being represented by the Santa Barbara Lawyers Alliance for Free Speech Rights, comprised of 44 of that community’s attorneys. The roast, from 6-9 p.m. at AT&T Park’s club level, will feature Roberts’ old boss from the Chronicle, Phil Bronstein, and Santa Barbaran Lou Cannon, Ronald Reagan’s biographer.

• Roberts has posted some of his thoughts at this Santa Barbara blog.

• McCaw’s suit against Roberts was reported by the Santa Barbara Independent, a weekly.

• Colleagues and friends put together a Web site — www.jerryrobertsandfriends.org.

• And E&P has a story about the legal defense fund seeking donations.