SF Chronicle slashing staff, possibly closing

I see your point, Babar, and have no doubt business is spiraling down the drain. But I still do not believe they are losing $50 million. No way.

 

OK, so if the truth is that they are losing $20 mil, does that make it somehow more palatable? It's not some temporary blip in a market -- this is money that ain't coming back.

 

Hearst bought the Chron for a reported $660 million in 1999. You check out the market capitalization of a company like Gannett (just under 1 billion), or the New York Times, and figure today the paper is worth less than $200 million easy.

 

Winner, winner.

Add to that newspapers providing their content for free on the Internet, and you create a tremendous disincentive to buy print copies. People wonder why they need to buy a newspaper if they can view a story on the Web for free.

Papers that are of record are fortunate in one regard: They get to make some bank with legal ads. But what if a state decides to do what Maryland proposed doing last year by allowing free papers to carry legal ads? Then those of record papers are up shit's creek without a paddle.

We all know that newspapers are continuing their death spiral by cutting beyond the bone. We all know that getting rid of talented people creates a quality vacuum that is noticeable even if Joe the Newspaper Reader doesn't know Jack Blow's byline from Jill Schmoe's.

We all know that letting wire service copy substitute for having beat writers "cover" big events in our backyard degrades the quality of what we provide to our readers. Trouble is, we can't convince the bean counters that the quality is worth the extra expense of paying the mileage and other expenses associated with sending a beat reporter, a photog and possibly a columnist.

And then people vote with their feet, so to speak. Well, they vote with hands that click other Web sites rather than with hands that reach into wallets or purses to buy that day's newspaper. They vote with hands that call circulation departments to cancel their subscription. They vote with hands that type BLOGS!!! that decry the lack of quality journalism that's out there.

We've got to figure out a way to get out of this death spiral. How to do it is the question we face.

 

Been lurking here for a while and figured I can add something here. In the Chronicle's last contract negotiation in 2005, the union asked the company to open its books. The company agreed -- turned out Joe Pesci was a full-blooded Sicilian but they shot him in the head anyway. Very sad.

No, the union-hired auditor determine that the Chronicle lost $62 million in 2004. Lost, as in, spent $62 million more than they brought in. I guess we don't know for sure if the $50 quote is accurate for 2008, but I'm going to vote yes.

 

That's pretty telling.

 

Naw, the auto makers and banks blow through that in a month or two.

Why the heck aren't there newspaper lobbyists in Washington begging for their share of the bailout money? After all, is an auto makers assembly line job somehow more valuable than a journalists' job?

 

No

 

I've got three decades in this business and get three newspapers on my doorstep most mornings. But even I am starting to succumb to the "why should I keep paying for it?" thinking, in part because I need to prop up my rainy day fund more than I care to prop up this crippled industry out of, I dunno, altruism. But also in part because it just feels like a loser's bet to keep paying top dollar (or any dollar) for a product that truly is getting worse. No offense to any of us still in daily journalism, either, but I am losing respect for the bylines and names on the masthead I see, knowing that people -- even when they're fighting the so-called good fight -- probably aren't fighting (or don't feel capable of fighting) the real fight: With their publishers and owners to stop this crap!

As much as I used to think that my hundreds of dollars in subscription fees was funding valuable journalism, now I can't get it out of my head that they simply are lining the pockets of asswipes and jerkoffs who have presided over this calamity. Those folks need to be cut out like cancers, and the journalists among us need to find other paths. I know that's harder than hell but anything short of that just keeps these rat-bastards afloat a little longer with their fat paychecks and perks.

Any sense that we're called to right wrongs ought to begin in-house. Otherwise we're just pests to the outside world, and ones not worth paying for.

 

Guess my self-loathing moment got the best of me. :-\

 

Nobody from the SF Chronicle on the judges' list.

 

I'm not quibbling . . .

. . . but $200 m, IF THAT.

The wasting-asset model is more relevant by the minute, and you know the captains aren't going to go down with the ship. Personal suffering is for the little people.