We all knew big layoffs were coming at the San Francisco Chronicle, but I had hoped that they’d try to keep at least one of the business/tech writers that is responsible for my occasional purchase of a copy of the paper. No luck.
The paper that is losing $1 million per week could fire every journalist it has on staff and still not break even. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying. 80 reporters, photographers and copy editors plus 20 in management will be gone by end of summer.
And the best reporters aren’t waiting around to see who gets laid off. They are walking out the door, into better jobs.
Jessica Guynn and Dan Fost are gone. They the reporters who were regularly attending events, talking to tech execs and developers and generally gunning for the interesting stories. Both resigned. Fost is freelancing. Guynn got a raise and a new job at the L.A. Times covering silicon valley.
Ellen Lee, Ryan Kim, Verne Kopytoff and Tom Abate remain to cover business and technology. They are fine writers, but the loss of Guynn and Fost is a serious blow to the newspaper. I found that when I was reading an interesting story in the Chronicle, it was usually written by one of them.
One bit of good news. David Lazarus, the brilliant strategist who suggested that only newspapers are qualified to do “real” journalism, is among those who’ve left. I’ll miss his occasional rants, but his blog-hate wasn’t helping the newspaper.
Al Saracevic, who’s taken an occasional public shot at TechCrunch, was promoted to Business Editor – he now controls the entire business section of the paper. Al is an incredibly nice guy but, like Lazarus, he’s firmly in the “does’t get new media” camp.
These losses may have made the bottom line look marginally better for this fast sinking ship. But losing the talent isn’t going to make people want to read the paper. They should have done everything they could to have kept Fost and Guynn.
Michael…. I’m all for you standing up for blogs etc. but just to let you know, TechCrunch has slipped a bit in recent months. I know you try to get news out as quickly as possible but sometimes the news is just plain misleading, the grammatical and spelling issues are getting worse and well… the opinions suck (they have almost always been positive for the past few months).
I’m not bashing TechCrunch. I’m a huge fan who is starting to get a little disappointed, especially since I tend to hold TechCrunch to a journalistic standard (which is what you’d want I suppose?).
Also, what’s up with TechCrunch UK? Are there any writer slots available?
Mike,
I think the Chron as well as other newpaper publishers have a hard time recognizing that the majority of the news information that they publish is syndicated, but that they credit themselves as being “journalists” and publishing original stories. Some of the stories are original, but it is the exception and not the norm.
I also think that the newspapers fail to recognize that it is the information in and of itself that audiences want as quickly as possible.
Hence, once they recognize the game is news information now, they’ll begin to embrace new media formats which facilitate immediate delivery.
Veritas isn’t for the truth unless it’s anonymous? I’ll take questionable opinions and the grammar and spelling issues over cowardice any day.
As for the Chronicle, at least a couple of times a week I see them trying to give it away on Chestnut & Union streets and my anecdotal obversations are that most people offered the SF Chronicle for FREE will NOT take it. It’s not a good sign.
It has to be on a trajectory to focus on local sports, local dining spots and local politics and crime news. The rest will be via wire services (which thankfully in the Chronicle’s case, includes the New York Times) and outside of New York, Boston, Chicago, LA and Washington, DC I think we’ll see more and more of that.
Honestly the payola thing hurt this blog. I still like it but the story surrounding that mess did some damage.
“the payola thing”
nice.
Time to start hiring Michael?
Dan and Jessica weren’t laid off, just to reiterate. Both will be missed for having good stories (better than most in the *other* paper…)
Although Dan got the Manhattan publishing crowd’s notice over his Blurb coverage
What? publishing in some place other than Manhattan?!
Am I the only person who sees the irony in bay area papers at the heart of DOT.COM world missing the new media revolution.
I need a few good freelance writers in SF. More in the lifestyle area though. Pass my email along Mike to any interested friends/colleagues that would fall into this area.
Michael – what’s hurting your blog is the lack of focus and poor writing (Duncan Riley’s articles are the most obvious example). You should focus on writing on solid web companies that are really making a difference and you should make sure your writers use proper grammar and perform research prior to writing articles with unresearched claims.
Balanced reporting = $PROFIT$
Sensationalized reporting = short term profit, long term loss of worth
Chronicle, Nytimes, etc. reporting = grossly unbalanced liberal ‘framed’ reporting
Grossly unbalanced partisan reporting = loss of readers
Loss of readers = loss of advertising
= $1,000,000 LOST PER MONTH! LOL!
Maybe after awhile there’s just nothing cool left to write about. The great and popular websites already have all the publicity they need and access to way better PR channels than techcrunch. You’re left trying to find that gem within the millions of struggling fools and sometimes maybe it’s just empty.
Hmmm…what’s hurting TechDumpster?
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http://siteanal...h.com?metric=uv
Ten bucks says Lazarus goes blog before the end of the year. Double or nothing on whether he allows comments.
LOL. hurting?
Hope all is well with Jessica and Dan Fost, both fantastic tech journalists.
Robert (#13): It looks like that graph illustrates a downward trend for the summer months, shouldn’t that be expected?
its a shame, blogs are good and all, but I for one also enjoy chillin out with the paper. The SF Chron is a cultural institution in the Bay Area and to see it demising is pretty sad.
newspapers when they deviate from publishing original stories which can bind or affect community lose on the race and have to wait either for someone to takeover or shut down. Any newspaper is an institution in itself.
>>Am I the only person who sees the irony in bay area papers at the heart of DOT.COM world missing the new media revolution.
Whoops! Looks like a glitch! I’ll try again. . .
>>Am I the only person who sees the irony in bay area papers at the heart of DOT.COM world missing the new media revolution.
LOL @ 18
techcrunch does increasingly suck as all it does is suck up to everyone, its become a bad version of fuckedcompany.
re sf chron, they should fire all their reporters and simply subcontract with bloggers and wires and have a few smart editors pick shit.
good riddance. That snailspam vehicle hasn’t published an original thought (save the illegally-acquired barry bonds testimony) in 20 years.
The NYTimes sets the slow-news agenda in this country; AP distributes it. That’s it.
As for your business reporters, Mike: If they’re any good, they can go work for Om or Matt.
Brian (#17) absolutely summer doldrums for almost everyone.
My point wasn’t that TechCrunch is hurting and let me be very clear, I don’t think TechCrunch is hurting!! I kind of love all the comments from people “who can’t read this site anymore because it’s so awful” and yet still…read it.
The guy from TechDumpster said TechCrunch was hurting — the chart was supposed to be humorous in depicting that it was TechDumpster that is hurting (too little info to even show up as a line on that chart), not TechCrunch!
Print media’s taking a real beating right now, especially business press. The IT trades had already and started to move to digital, which has helped them. InfoWorld’s no longer published in print – only online. I can remember when it was not only available in print, but thick with pages.
I think this is going to cycle around to all of the verticals in all print media – fashion, entertainment, children/parenting, etc. Most of the tech verticals already had their downturn and moved online, but I’m sure some will see changes like this too.
Ah, disruption. It’s not a good time to be a print journalist (or just getting out of journalism school) but I suspect that in two years, most print will get the digital world, have made their moves, and money will be pumping back in, but things will never be the same again, that’s for sure.
Could be a good opportunity to replace some of poor performing TC writers and get one of the laid off journos to do some writing here, Mike?
Here one awesome post right on the topic: http://tinyurl.com/33z3sf
End of a large print news outlet is as relevant to web 2.0 as a launch of a new site.
The Chron is way too liberal. The one-sidedness makes me feel like I’m reading fiction. Why read something when you know so much infromation is purposely left out?
TechDumpster wrote: Michael – what’s hurting your blog is the lack of focus and poor writing (Duncan Riley’s articles are the most obvious example). You should focus on writing on solid web companies that are really making a difference …
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Yup. We need more stories about social networking companies – NOT.
As for the Chron, I read it every day. I find it good to get away from the computer. I like how the newspaper includes something for everyone. You get to choose from the whole selection of stories, in one place, without having to do any work other than flip the page.
Like many old newspapers, the Chron has made many mistakes. Their SFGate web site sucks. It’s a mishmash of a site. There search functionality doesn’t work very well. You can click on a link that says Today’s Chronicle but it doesn’t look anything like the newspaper. And if you need any help from what passes for support there, good luck in getting a reply.
The Chron still won’t allow the use of anonymous names in their letters to the editors section. So I refuse to send letters to the Editor. I think this is a big point for many younger people.
I’m still waiting for someone to take the whole newspaper, put it into PDF format on the web and make it look exactly like the newspaper all the way. The newspaper format is tried and proven over 150 or more years. It is an optimized way to provide information. But instead, newspapers try to map their proven format into something that looks like everything else on the web, a mess of stories, columns, frames, etc.
The Chron cuts simply continue the prevailing trend: newspapers are slashing costs and quality is suffering, and the journalists who used to work for them are moving into the blogosphere. It’s no longer a war between new and old media. The Forbes blog-basher turned out to be Fake Steve Jobs. Walt Mossberg is blogging. The Internet has won. It’s time for the blogosphere to declare victory and gracefully absorb some of these talented journalists, and do a little less dancing on their former employers’ graves.
Johnson: “I’m still waiting for someone to take the whole newspaper, put it into PDF format on the web and make it look exactly like the newspaper all the way”
Yeah.. because people LOVE flipping through PDFs on their screen all day. You must have a Masters in user interface design.
LOL ^
What’s a newspaper? Seriously, most twenty-somethings aren’t interested in following a print publication and the days of type-press media are over. Yes, consolidation and select pubs will likely survive but online media is where its at.
Why dont they just adapt to new media like other newspapers? Even the terrible Houston Chronicles adapted with their chron.com and are staying well in the black.
@32 Phileg – And I suppose you think that morass of links and info in most website design is the ultimate UI design? Like http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ for example. What do I look at first, where do I go, where was I, how do I get back? Sheese. I only suggested PDF because it could easily & accurately represent a real world newspaper. I am sure there are other similar options.
My point was that newspaper design has been massaged over a long period of time and I personally am comfortable with that design. So I would like an online representation.
David Lazarus was a fine reporter and will do great at the LA Times. I read countless articles by him in the Chronicle over the years. Many were great examples of good, investigative journalism, discussing difficult topics and questioning the status quo. A quick example: a few years ago he wrote a long, in-depth analysis on all issues regarding homelessness in San Francisco. The Chronicle published his findings over several days, in one of the best reports written about this never-ending Bay Area problem. David will be missed.
Mike – thanks for the kind words. Count me among those who hates to see newspapers struggling to get by in the Internet age, but I think they’ll find a way to survive. Plenty of old media have survived the onslaught of new media – print survived radio, radio survived television, etc.
And you’re mistaken to think Al Saracevic doesn’t get new media. He pushed to have us launched Tech Chronicles, and is just the guy to lead the Business section. As witnessed by that post you linked to, Al is just wickedly funny, fearless, and opinionated, and like any good journalist has a fine eye for contradiction. Sounds to me like a good combination for the blogosphere.
For those of you looking for a full content PDF of a newspaper, have you heard of http://www.pressdisplay.com? It offers over 500 full digital replicas of newspapers from around the world. It starts with a PDF from the publisher and adds a lot of cool features like email sharing, blogging, instant translation, audio, mobile (yes, even for an iPhone or BB), search and monitoring and offline reading. It’s the whole paper without the paper and it’s in the standard newspaper format. You can try it for free for 1 month if you register and use the offercode: news
Enjoy!
Gayle