SF Chronicle slashing staff, possibly closing

Some Guy, that's a bit rough. Let me give you a little insight, which might have been helpful to you before you posted.

The Bay Area has been one of the softest advertising markets in the country since 2000 because of the dot.com bust. Much of the buildup of the local economy in the years prior was hinged to the dot.coms, and it had not recovered to pre-bust levels even before the recent economic downturn.

Add to that Craigslist. Now, the Bay Area is not unique to that phenomenon, but study upon study has shown that the Bay Area has the highest number of computer users per capita in the country, which means more people have abandoned newspaper classifieds, and sooner.

Third -- and I say this as a staunch union man -- our paper does have very expensive labor contracts, even after many rounds of concessions on our side.

Has Hearst/Chronicle made mistakes here? Yup. Plenty of them. The biggest probably was not challenging the Singleton hegemony in our region sooner. As a result, whatever "good" advertising there is, i.e, advertising that reaches wealthier readers, is mostly concentrated in Singleton's core geography.

Hearst might have been slow to streamline costs, but we are a much, much smaller outfit now than we were. There is always fat to trim, but I can assure you Hearst has not "set out" to lose $50 million a year.

 

Kidnap the daughter.

(too soon?)

Also, the Baltimore Examiner either closed or is about to close, so they're not doing so hot either.

 

The Baltimore Examiner printed its last edition on Feb. 16 IIRC.

 

Sounds like a winner to me.

 

formersportsjournalists.com ... I am laughing. Or is that crying?

 

What EXACTLY does it mean when you say you LOST $50 million?

You can do all kinds of things with semantics here.

Did you gross $50 million and have $100 million in expenses to include debt service? Now THAT is a $50 million loss.

Or, did you gross $120 million last year and only $70 million this year (even if your expenses were only $40 million this year, meaning you actually cleared $30 million despite making $50 million less)?

Or, did you budget for $115 million in revenues and made only $65 million (even though, again, your expenses were still under $65 million).

This could go on and on. Either way, corporate can claim they "lost" $50 million to justify slashing and burning, when in reality they still are actually taking in more money than going out. In such case, said slashing and burning just gives them another bump in their net profit.

I'm suspicious of any of this kind of talk.

 

Liam Neeson will kick your fuckin' ass, dude.

 

The Bay Area situation is also really screwed up because Hearst is in business with Singleton as I recall.
But I also remember when there was talk of Hearst closing the Examiner and they ended up buying the Chron and later helped Singleton buy the Mercury News.

 

i don't mean to be too much of a dick, but did the Chron send anyone to the judging?

 

Ding ding ding. I'd bet that $50 million this is EXACTLY what is going on. They made $50 million less last year than the year before.

No way in fuck ANYONE is losing $50 million a year. It is not happening.

 

Not saying a lot of shenanigans don't go on in how newspapers report their finances, but I'm willing to believe that they're losing a lot.

Classified ads traditionally accounted for roughly 40 percent of a newspaper's income -- do you know any reason why any remotely sophisticated person under 60 years old would today choose to pay to place a classified ad in a print paper?

Retail ads are a fraction of what they used to be. How many times have you have had season preview special sections cut back because they can't sell ads for them?

And circulation numbers are free falling almost everywhere, taking most of the rest of the revenue with it.

The fact that papers are closing is the proof. If it were just a matter of them not making as much as they used to make, they wouldn't walk away. Companies are walking away now, from established, historical products that mean something in their communities. Brand names with value.

Which means they are not only actually losing money, they are convinced it's not fixable. These are papers that weathered the Depression, but know they can't survive the internet.