Now run by former top Gannett executive Frank Vega (left), The San Francisco Chronicle lost more than $50 million last year, "and this year's losses to date are worse," Hearst Corp. just announced. That is on top of more than $330 million in losses since Hearst bought the Chronicle eight years ago. "It's just a fact of life that we need to live within our means as a newspaper, and we have not for years,'' Vega told the paper.
Hearst warned it would close or sell the paper unless "critical" cost-cutting starts within weeks -- including "significant" reductions in union and non-union jobs. (Sounds like Vega's about to make the unions an offer, ahem, they can't refuse.)The Chronicle is the nation's eleventh-biggest, by circulation: 343,488 daily; 398,116 Sundays, as of Sept. 30, according to Deutsche Bank. Yet, as across the industry, circulation has slipped: down 7% daily, and 7.4% on Sunday, compared to September 2007, the bank says.
Family-controlled Hearst bought the paper just as the technology bubble burst, and the industry tumbled into a rapid decline. Since then, it has lost hundreds of millions of dollars despite multiple rounds of cost cuts. It's not even clear that local Hearst scion William Randolph Hearst III will step in.
$660M purchase price
Hearst chose perhaps the worst possible year, 2000, to buy the Chronicle: It paid $660 million that July for a single newspaper -- astonishing now, after eight years of the industry's rapid decline. That price is equivalent to nearly 75% of Gannett's entire current market capitalization, $931 million -- including USA Today -- based on this afternoon's closing stock price, $4.08 a share.
The Chronicle was recently redesigned under top Editor Ward Bushee; Vega recruited him more than a year ago from The Arizona Republic.
Earlier: What Bushee's move said about the Chronicle's future
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[Image: today's front page, Newseum]
Here's the Examiner's report:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sfexaminer.com/local/San-Francisco-Chronicle-on-the-brink-of-closure-40249977.html
Whoops.
ReplyDeleteHere:
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/
San-Francisco-Chronicle-on-the-
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I hope the FCC is listening. Newspaper/TV consolidation needs to happen and happen in a big way. There is a massive oversupply of local news. Newspapers cannot afford to promote themselves and thus they are DEAD without a media partner (TV/radio/cable) to help promote their brands. Cold calling and word of mouth alone won't cut it.
ReplyDeleteWhat?!? Corporate consolidation is what got journalism into this mess!! Local ownership is all that will save papers now ...
ReplyDeleteAlso in newspaper new> Long time NY Post columnist Liz Smith is leaving> The post can not afford to pay her anymore>
ReplyDeleteFrank Vega is still around smile an all huh?
ReplyDeleteWonder if that means Ward Bushee, who left The Arizona Republic to helm the Chron, will be leaving and perhaps heading to USAToday's top gig...Any intell?
ReplyDeleteHe'd love it -- so long as he could telecommute from San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteThe irony of the (barely) conservative Examiner surviving while the full-bore-liberal Chron dies - in SAN FRANCISCO - is so, so delicious.
ReplyDeleteWhat was it Cartman said about the taste of their tears?
Frank Vega, the grinning skirt-chaser and art collector who oversaw Fla. Today when I was a cub?
ReplyDeleteThat hound dog has already made enuf money from this beloved field. Move over, and let a woman at the helm of a paper already.
Vega, go back to circulation. OPen some route why doncha?
Hey LOL NUT
ReplyDeleteTake your knuckle dragging (so-so delicious) neo-CON posts over to Limbaugh.com.
Time for the Pressmens Union to standup to BOB K'S intimidation. In a meeting yesterday he threatened to send our work to a non union shop if we did not cower to his demands once again. With this guy's deminer he should be at Gitmo.
ReplyDeleteMy question is this. I know I was not paid for the week that I was froughed. How do I know that the people that get pay checks once a month from corporate were not paid for the week they were froughed?
ReplyDelete