SF Chronicle Could Be Shut Down or Sold
| Tue Feb. 24, 2009 5:05 PM PST
Hearst said today that it may sell, or totally shutter, San Francisco's main daily newspaper. The San Francisco Chronicle lost $50 million in 2008, and has been losing money consistently since 2001. If the paper cannot recoup losses "within weeks" via job cuts and other measures, Hearst officials said via a statement today, "...we will have no choice but to quickly seek a buyer for the Chronicle or, should a buyer not be found, to shut the newspaper down." According to Reuters, the Chronicle employs nearly 300 people on its news staff alone, and is the 12th largest daily in the nation.
So what does it mean for San Francisco to lose the Chronicle? For Bay Area folks, there are a number of newspapers that could possibly step up coverage to fill the gap, like the excellent San Jose Mercury News or the Oakland Tribune. Television news crews could conceivably lengthen their broadcasts. So far, all I've seen is that one of the of the city's smaller dailies, the San Francisco Examiner, is hiring. The Examiner also has only half the Chronicle's circulation, and is given away free instead of sold. While many San Franciscans have pooh-poohed the Chronicle for its heavy slant toward lightweight stories, surely the Examiner is not what they envisioned as a solution.
More disturbing than the Examiner taking over San Francisco is the idea that liberal, literate, San Francisco might not have a newspaper to call its own. Even Cleveland and La Crosse, Wisconsin, have their own papers. Granted, a Sunday morning in San Francisco will show you as many people reading the New York Times as the Sunday Chronicle, but still, the Chronicle has been there and there really isn't another paper in town of similar quality or distribution. As much as I'd like to think a major city can survive without a newspaper, I'm not super-excited to try the experiment personally. San Francisco has some of the nation's most tech-savvy citizens, but are they really ready to get their local news only from virtual sources? If the Chronicle gets shut down within weeks, as seems to be Hearst's intention, they may have no choice but to find out the hard way.
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Comments
no big loss
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue Feb. 24, 2009 9:06 PM PST.
The Chronicle has not been a very respected newspaper for a long time now, as it is too close to the political center and too tied up in corporate politics for the people of SF. Living in such a tech-savvy city, as the article puts it, most San Franciscans already get their news online from a variety of sources. The Examiner, on the other hand, is a full-on joke. People read it because it is free. There is no way it will take over as a major newspaper unless some major changes are made.
Hearst is also selling off
Submitted by Anca (not verified) on Tue Feb. 24, 2009 9:21 PM PST.
Hearst is also selling off (or pretending to) the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Most likely, the paper version will close down soon while the web version may or may not remain.
Assistant Editor?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue Feb. 24, 2009 10:34 PM PST.
Really? This reads like it's written by a Mother Jones intern on college break from another state.
"Totally shutter?" Because you can partially shutter a business?
Wow, "via" twice in one sentence? Fancy.
Mother Jones is based in San Francisco. She had to quote Reuters to say there are 300 editorial jobs at the Chronicle?
The "excellent" San Jose Mercury News? Huh? Has she read the Mercury News since it was taken over by Singleton? He turned that paper, and the CC Times, into shadows of their former selves.
There are plenty of valid critiques of the Chronicle, but I don't think the top reason it is "pooh poohed" (an odd and weak verb choice) is its slant toward lightweight stories.
"Super-excited." This requires no commentary.
Finally, saying it "seems to be Hearst's intention" to close down the paper reflects complete niavete. Their intention in announcing the possibility of the closure is clearly to send a signal to the unions that they need to acquiesce to the company's demands -- and quickly.
The thing Jen Phillips should be most worried about in this news isn't that there won't be a legitimate daily paper to read in San Francisco, but that 270 journalists -- see, I looked it up myself -- more talented than her could be gunning for the scarce Bay Area journalism jobs like hers.
Assistant editor?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Feb. 25, 2009 2:28 PM PST.
If you're going to be so critical, you should kiow that it's "more talented than she," not "her.' (The verb "is" is implied.)
Spell check
Submitted by Tenderloin resident (not verified) on Fri Feb. 27, 2009 2:55 PM PST.
What does "kiow" mean?
I agree, this article is garbage
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun Mar. 1, 2009 5:38 PM PST.
"a Sunday morning in San Francisco will show you"?
A Sunday morning in San Francisco will not show you anything. Perhaps a look inside a coffee shop ON a Sunday morning would. But a Sunday morning by itself means anything and nothing.
at least....
Submitted by rob hall (not verified) on Fri Feb. 27, 2009 10:44 AM PST.
...ms phillips didn't trumpet 'AT LEAST WE STILL HAVE BLOGZ LOL! I LOVE MISSION MISSION.' god spared us that, and for that i thank him her it.
neither the trib nor the merc -- nor any other homogeneous medianews outlet, from monterey bay to the altamont pass -- cover san francisco. if the chron goes, the examiner will have no one with whom to compete, thereby allowing its evil corporate owners to downsize if they so wish.
extended tv news broadcasts? please -- half of the stories from the 'evening news' appeared in print that morning. there is simply no substitute for a large daily paper -- which, to be fair, the chron has not been for at least four years, when it started hemorrhaging staff like a post-2000 dot.com.
from the sound of it, ms phillips hasn't opened up a paper in quite some time -- and perhaps that is the real tragedy. print is dying, and few are present to mourn its passing.
San Francisco has other news outlets
Submitted by head-scratcher (not verified) on Fri Feb. 27, 2009 12:10 PM PST.
I have to wonder whether the author of this piece actually visited San Francisco, let alone lived here, before she played local media pundit for Mo-Jones. (I'm forced to wonder about her, because she didn't reply to my email.)
San Francisco has two major dailies, a number of smaller dailies, two major weeklies (3 if you count the Biz Times), countless credible blogs, local radio, and plenty of home-grown magazines. But, from reading this, you would think that nothing existed apart from duh TV machine and the Chronicle - which, by the way, is a regional Bay Area paper that happens to be based in San Francisco.
I am unspeakably sorry that the Chronicle is in it's last throes, but it was killed by Hearst execs some time ago. How many San Francisco stories does it have every day? 2? 3? up to 5, on special occasions? Compare that to either of the weeklies or to the Examiner (which actually is a local paper, and is slightly older than the 144 year-old Chronicle); and then compare how much it costs to pick them up, and you can see why the broadsheet is withering.
You're kidding, right?
Submitted by Tenderloin resident (not verified) on Fri Feb. 27, 2009 2:14 PM PST.
There are many solid comments here. That's more than one can say about the "blog," which shows us, in a microcosm, the sad state of affairs in journalism. Web logs serve agendas rather than report news. It's nice when they do spur meaningful dialogue in a comment section, which we can at least give Jen Phillips credit for doing here.
However, Ms. Phillips, if one comment above is true about Mother Jones being based in S.F. -- which would lead me to believe you are, too, or at least have been here before (I would hope) -- then how can you say the Chronicle is a local newspaper? Give us one bit of evidence to support that claim.
Calling it a local paper is like saying Applebee's is a local restaurant, because it's "in the neighborhood."
The Chronicle does have a "local" section daily. It's called "Bay Area." It is a compendium of regional news, which, as a comment noted, contains maybe two to three S.F. stories. Check out the Examiner any day of the week and you will find five to eight pages dedicated to S.F. news. The Examiner, while it's true that it's smaller than the Chronicle, does not purport to be anything but a local paper. Delusions of grandeur brought the Chronicle to where it is today.
And as far as Ms. Phillips' claim that the liberal elite of S.F. will lose their voice, I would ask for proof of that voice in the Chronicle. Perhaps you could have linked to some stories to support such a missive. Check out the Bay Guardian if you want the Voice of the Liberals.
Besides, when has it ever been the duty of a newspaper or news outlet to serve but one population? That's what people like you are for, Ms. Phillips.
This blog is a perfect example of the blind leading the blind. But, thank you for exposing the problems with modern journalism.
Chronicles demise...
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat Feb. 28, 2009 10:09 AM PST.
Maybe MOJO will pick up the slack? News of events in The City meant enough to me to be a Chronicle subscriber for years when I was (a lot) younger. These past 30 or so years I've read weekly mags for news while on the road or watched local channels hoping to be enlightened from time to time when I came home.
Now, I DVR MSNBC and zap stuff I'm not enterested in. Bloomberg on Sirius is ok EXCEPT for the commercials which constantly drive me off. Subscription radio, with commercials??? Whats' wrong here?
I stopped taking the local paper after moving to Reno and realizing the city had no paper recycling. Driving across town to dispose of pounds of adds responsibly seemed, well, irresponsible. I pass on MOJO when I'm done with one, hoping others will learn as well. God Bless our President and his family!
The Chronicle has always
Submitted by James12 on Sat Feb. 28, 2009 1:25 PM PST.
The Chronicle has always been a weak and superficial paper, way back into the fifties when it was one of four dailies. Its strength was a bunch of charming columnists, Terrance O'Flaherty and Stanton Delaplane, among them, and great half-page ads for City of Paris' Normandy Lane (the Ferry Building of the time) and I. Magnin. Carl Nolte is the last of the old style Chronicle reporters.
The Chronicle was never a good hard news newspaper, never had the crisp journalistic tone other papers did (probably handed down from George Orwell). Most of its stories were taken from the wires, from UPI or from the New York Times but always truncated, the last five paragraphs always missing. If you were a serious news junkie you supplemented the Chronicle with a copy of the LA Times.
Recently the Chronicle's work has been on the unbearable cute side, full of stock phrases and expired metaphors. Where are the hard-nosed editors who say you can't do that? where are the headline writers who can help give a story its focus? All that money Hearst has poured into the Chronicle, for what?
The most terrible thing about Chronicle in the last 10 years or so is the way it has internalized a small town critique of San Francisco in its reporting. We'll be the laughing stock of the state or the country if we continue this way, they seem to be saying. C W Nevius' story about the Mission district's opposition to American Appeal was lazy and unbalanced. The Harding Theater coverage was biased and snippy. Only the New York Times, in occassional reports, seems have some idea of what San Francisco is about--and the importance of its progressive tradition.
The Examiner is not horrible--it does cover a lot of stuff on a granular no-nonsense level (though it does feature the curious Ken Garcia, and it did endorse McCain). The SF Weekly is a part of a dubiously put together chain and a has bit much of a gratuitously contrarian tone to its reporting. The Bay Area Guardian is probably the last of the truly independent weeklies, but that's putting all our journalistic eggs in one basket.
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