Editorial cartoon about Google news - click on the image to see it in its full size
It was interesting to be in San Francisco recently and read the discussion, overt and snide (see above), in the Chronicle and elsewhere, about how the future of San Fran might play out without a newspaper.
The Chronicle is NoCal’s biggest paper, with a circulation well over 300,000. But last month, the owner — specifically Hearst vice chair and CEO Frank A. Bennack Jr. and president Steven R. Swartz — released a dire statement.
“…without the specific changes we are seeking across the entire Chronicle organization, 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,” they said.
The paper has been losing money every year since 2001, and, like everywhere, 2009 is hardly rosy. (Hearst recently made good on its word elsewhere, turning the Seattle Post-Intelligencer into an online-only shadow of its former self.)
Cartoons like the one above, and supportive letters to the editor filled the Chronicle. The people of San Francisco, surprise surprise, love their paper. I’ll pay more! they chanted, on the letters page. Here’s a selection of letters from today alone.
I have been giving a lot of thought about how to save one of the high points of my day: The Chronicle. … This plan may also have the benefit of encouraging the suburban dailies to devote more of their coverage to their communities, instead of relying so heavily on the Associated Press and other news services to serve their customers, who may not have the advantage of reading a “city paper.”
– How about one giant daily?, David Loberg, March 26
Don’t leave us … we need you desperately!
–Core audience, Daniel B. Rosen, March 26
I have been reading this paper since I was in elementary school in the ’60’s. I even won an elephant shaped key to the San Francisco Zoo information boxes for a painting when kids used to submit their artwork and the pictures were published in the original Green sports pages alongside the comics.
–Santa Cruz View, Susan Schaefer, March 26
My heart goes out to these and other newspaper lovers around the world in danger of losing their daily fix, their connection to the world around them. Here’s hoping something valuable and sustainable comes out of their fights.