Bay Area bloodbath

Slap, I agree with you that it is probably a vital market. In fact, I think it's a market that just begging for someone with deep pockets--Rupert Murdoch, perhaps?--to come in, buy a paper and compete with the Chronicle and Lean Dean.

 

Between the cost of living in the Bay Area, the news consuming audience, and the way BANG has gone poof, perhaps Singleton bit off more than he could swallow with his purchases.
And if the current rate of attrition followed by declining revenues continues, Singleton could be bottoming out. I wonder if that guy "reimagining" the Merc will still be there once the buyouts are done. Sounds like Singleton is doing it himself. Do any papers still have "hiring" managers?

I think the Bay Area still is a viable market, but the day of the general interest newspaper might be dying.

A sports daily would work there.
A hard core politics and news daily for the NPR crowd.
A daily aimed at suburban families with a lot of features on the community and "living" news.
And I'm sure they already have a thriving Spanish-language daily.

The key isn't the quality of the newspaper, it is how effective it is at reaching a specific demographic or audience. Advertisers don't want to pay for a market segment they aren't after anyway.

 

Vibrant market in general, dying for newspapers. Singleton pretty much has 'em all except for the Chronicle ... whose owners inflicted their own financial damages beyond those of the industry in general by absorbing the Examiner's staff almost in whole and by paying $66 million to the Examiner's new owners.

 

I'll echo this. Gladly. Loudly.

 

the merc is definitely part of this, just to clarify.

from its Web site:

the Mercury News today announced an unspecified number of staff reductions through a combination of buyouts and layoffs.

Publisher Mac Tully cited a serious drop in advertising revenue as the reason for the cost reduction, which will be completed in early March. The reductions will be the third round of staff cuts since September 2006.

The Mercury News is owned by Denver-based MediaNews, which also owns the Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times. Those newspapers, along with roughly 14 other daily and weekly papers in the company's Bay Area News Group, announced today that they would offer buyouts to roughly 1,100 employees. The company didn't specify how many positions would be eliminated.

 

Not a surprise. He loathes unions. See Long Beach and what happened there. And, well, everywhere else.

 

I get the feeling we'll be hearing more of this soon from all Lean Dean operations, not just BANG and, on the other thread, LANG.

 

by the way, new bosses in San Jose are not too interested in "reimagining" much, as Ms. Hutton learned.

 

OK, so maybe he's an ass who hates unions (I know nothing of the man). But shouldn't a little anger be directed at the unions who agreed to that deal?

 

Who needs to reimagine when you can just cut the workforce and size of the paper in half? Surely that will bring advertisers back!

 

Babyjay, why don't you read the Lean Dean thread.
Educate yourself before you post on a thread where hundreds/(thousands with families) of lives are about to change.