In the latest sign of the deteriorating state of the newspaper industry, Hearst Corp. said Tuesday it must significantly reduce the number of employees at the San Francisco Chronicle “within weeks” or it will sell or close the newspaper.
The startlingly blunt statement from the Chronicle’s parent company adds one more publication to the list of critically ill newspapers caught in an industry slump that has produced numerous bankruptcy filings.
Many newspapers are showing signs of acute financial stress not just because of the economic downturn but due to a massive decline in print advertising, their primary source of revenue. Readers have migrated online, where they can get their news for free, but advertising revenue has not followed, leaving publishers scrambling to figure out a sustainable economic model for their newsrooms.
But the wave of threatened closures has until now affected primarily two-newspaper towns, including Seattle, Denver and Tucson. Tuesday’s announcement raises the prospect that San Francisco — where the Chronicle, with its storied history, is the only major paper — could be left without one.
Could not possibly happen soon enough to suit me. San Francisco would be a much better burg without Pravda West belching left-wing propaganda on a daily basis, and the thought of the disgusting Mark Morford out on the pavement warms the cockles of my heart.
(via Bashir - thanks!)
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Careful Bill: they may still figure out how much money they could save by simply reprinting from The Daily Kos and Huff Po directly instead of having reporters rewrite the material from those sites into “news”