Here’s a change of pace from the predictable story line about how newspapers are going out of business. Former Palo Alto Daily News managing editor Jeramy Gordon (pictured) is celebrating the first anniversary of the free daily he started in Santa Barbara. What’s more, he says the paper is in the black. The Santa Barbara Daily Sound became profitable 9 1/2 months after it started.

Gordon’s timing couldn’t be better. The community’s incumbent daily, the Santa Barbara News-Press, has been self-destructing over the past year. Most of its news staff has quit or has been fired amid allegations of newsroom meddling by billionaire publisher Wendy McCaw.

Gordon’s Daily Sound prints 9,000 papers a day, five days a week. Over the past year, the paper has more than tripled its page count, circulation and staff. Beginning with only three full time staffers, the Daily Sound currently employs nine full-time employees and numerous part-timers and freelancers.