SFist: Phil Bronstein Named Editor-at-Large of Hearst Newspapers Division, SF Chronicle; New Editor TBA

mariconsoy

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:54:58 -0800

I miss The Weekly World News and "Bat Boy"

Brock Keeling

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:45:33 -0800

New Chron editor announced: Ward E. Bushee.

The Angry Young Man

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:15:58 -0800

Bait, Generic? The only trap here is in your strange little mind. I thought the criteria you offered up were good for determining newspaper quality. I chose the three easiest to qualify. I can see why you'd call that cherry picking, but a quick glance at your attempt to evaluate the others proves how wrong you are. I mean, you can't be serious in suggesting that the Chronicle has "hella" international news reporting and the other two have none. A quick glance at today's Comical shows a total of three pages of world news. Ooooh! How in depth! Your attempt at gaging the other categories is just as flimsy. Unique web hits? Number of references in the New York Times archives? Come off it. Admit you're one of those SF chauvinists who can't deal with any kind of criticism being directed at San Francisco. It really chaps your hide that SF is basically on the same level as Minneapolis, as opposed to London or Paris or whatever real city you think this pretentious provincial gated community we live in ought to be compared to. Ptsch! RE: Mecke. You're putting the cart before the horse, son. No one can vote for the man when they've never even heard of him. The Chronicle totally contributed to that by basically blacking out any kind of news on candidates who weren't Gavin Newsom or a total joke, like Chicken John.

Generic

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:36:50 -0800

Having taken the bait, you''ll now have to tell me how it tastes. Because if you concede that this is an acceptable way to evaluate the importance of a newspaper, you'll have to allow that, by these same standards, while the Chron is not substantially better, it's certainly not substantially worse. But even that doesn't hold up, because from the absences I can infer you've cherry-picked your three criterion, and yep ... International reportage? -MS: None. -Oregonian: None. -Chron: Hella. AP pick-ups? Wouldn't know where to find AP stats, but I can open do a quick NYT archive search. -MST: 334 -Oregonian: 416 -Chron: 1,834 Web Presence? (Unique hits) -Oregonian: Less than a million -MST: 2.5 million -Chron: 5.2 milliion And it doesn't take much to then draw conclusions as to why those last numbers have far more valence than stats re: paper circulation, these days. By my scoring that's Chron-3, MST- 1, Oregonian-0, with the others, at best, a draw. And now after having wiki'd the respective rags, I can see other factors as well, such as the stiffness of their competitors. The Minnesota Star Tribune's competitor is ... wait for it ... the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The Oregonian doesn't even have a rival to speak of. Whereas the Chron is hotly contested by both the Oakland Trib and the hefty SJ Merc (not to mention the Examiner and Contra Costa Times) in the nation's 4th largest media market. The Chron = big fish, big pond. Your picks ... medium fishes, medium ponds. So, you know, we can go round and round. Potayto, potahdo. Re: Mecke, as I said, never broke a pitiful 7%. Ever. So you're incorrectly assigning causality. Did Mecke not break single digits because the Chron gave him sparse coverage? Or was there sparse coverage because he never broke single digits? The latter. At some point the public has to take your candidacy seriously, and SF never did. Mecke never demonstrated any city-wide constituency, so there's no story to cover. Just as there wasn't with Grasshopper or Chicken John. A coronation happened, sure, but not in the editorial room.

The Angry Young Man

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:45:51 -0800

Generic, these are really good criteria. let's see how the three newspapers in question stack up to some of them. DC Bureau? -SF Chronicle: Yes -Oregonian: Yes -Minneapolis Star Tribune (Strib): You betcha' Circulation - -SF Chronicle: Daily 386,564/Sunday 438,006 -Oregonian: Daily 319,625/Sunday 375,913 -Strib: Daily 345,252/Sunday 574,406 (!!!) Total Pulitzer Prizes - -SF Chronicle: 6 -The Oregonian: 6 -Strib: 5 Hrmmm. To be honest, you had me doubting there for a second, Generic. Looks like the Comical is right on par with both the Oregonian and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Interesting, considering the fact that as individual cities, both Portland and Minneapolis are about half the size of SF. World class, indeed. As regards Quintin Mecke - did the Chronicle even cover Mecke? Or, did it simply just lump him in with Chicken John and the naked, homeless taxi cab guy? The Chronicle picked Gavin Newsom for mayor and dismissed, derided, or flat out ignored the other candidates. Without equal press coverage, no one else had a chance.

Generic

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:47:40 -0800

Comparison is entirely apt. Never said wasn't. I'm saying within that comparison, the Oregonian and MS fail. I think the Chron is a larger player because it simply is. Use any objective standard outside the ivory-tower of a journalism school: How many times does the AP pick up a story? What's the quality of its international reportage? Does it maintain a DC bureau? How many Pulitzers have they racked up? What kind of presence does it have in the blogopshere, and more broadly, the internet? And most damningly, what's the size of its daily/weekly circulation? You know, the usual. I don't see how your two choices win. (And did Quintin Mecke ever, ever poll higher than 7%? Did anyone?)

The Angry Young Man

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:53:35 -0800

"The Oregonian and the Minneapolis Star are not players in the national journalism scene. So, no dice." Assuming what you say about those two newspapers may be true, I'm forced to ask just why you think the Chronicle is a "player in the national journalism scene"? I don't get it. Furthermore, considering the fact that both the Portland and Twin Cities metropolitan areas have populations well over two million and three million people, respectively, the comparison of their newspapers to our local rag is apt. As far as my so-called reductive view of the recent mayoral race, pffffft. Please.

Generic

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:32:26 -0800

Overstatement? Exaggeration? Hyperbole? The Comical is so heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, it's little more than a propaganda sheet for the residents of Specific Whites. Yep, that pretty much fits. Setting aside for a second your reductive view of the recent Mayoral race, let's grant (for argument's sake) Grrg's assertion that SF is a million person college town. The challenge would then be to create a newspaper for ... a million person college town. That's why, TAYM, I asked you which newspaper you would chose over the Chron. The Oregonian and the Minneapolis Star are not players in the national journalism scene. So, no dice. The political bias of the Washington Post makes The Chronicle look like Pravda. And of course, the NYT and LAT are better. The quality and relevance of a newspaper will always be relative to size and significance of the region it covers. No one seriously compares the Chronicle to the NYT any more than they would seriously compare Union Square to Times Square. I'll grant you then, that the San Ho Merc, and Boston Globe are better papers, operating in similar markets. That's two. A pretty good batting average. if you're talking about journalistic standards alone, well, I'm pretty pissed about the pro-Hillary coverage they're printing over there at 5th and Market. But you know who's really pro-Clinton? The San Jose Mercury. You say potayto, I say potahdo.

The Angry Young Man

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:31:05 -0800

I beg to differ, Brock. A newspaper by its very nature is obligated to keep the population it serves adequately informed. How are people expected to make reasonable choices about anything when they don't even have access to adequate information? The Chronicle fails abysmally at this simple task. I think back to our recent mayoral election and how seriously skewed the Chronicle's coverage of the whole mess happened to be. Anyone running for mayor who wasn't named Gavin Newsom, was either ignored by the newspaper's political writers, or worse, dismissed out of hand. This was the case regardless of whether the candidate was serious in intent or not. Sorry. That's not news coverage. At best, it's editorializing under guise of journalism, at worse propaganda for the status quo.

Brock Keeling

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:05:30 -0800

that there is an overstatement.

The Angry Young Man

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:00:25 -0800

Great. Unfortunately, Sports and Datebook isn't news. Greg nails it on the head. The Comical is so heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, it's little more than a propaganda sheet for the residents of Specific Whites. It's one of the bigger reasons SF is such a mess.

Joel

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:37:26 -0800

The Chronicle is definitely not a great newspaper but I think they do a pretty good job on the back end at least: Sports and Datebook.

Greg

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:10:11 -0800

often times the LA Times has better reporting about SF issues than our papers do...it's because they're not trying to placate anyone here in our little less than a million person college town.

davey k

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 03:17:26 -0800

And not one Komodo dragon joke. I'm disappointed.

davey k

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:04:10 -0800

Jeez... I'd even take the Examiner over the Chron. Though SFGate has a much better website than Examiner.com.

The Angry Young Man

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:14:55 -0800

The obvious choices are the New York Times or the LA Times. While those are much larger cities, the locals here like to think we're somehow on the same level. Newspapers from similar sized cities that I consider of higher quality than the Comical would include the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Washington Post, The Oregonian, and the Boston Globe. Even the San Jose Mercury is better than the Comical. It's a real tragedy.

Generic

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:00:53 -0800

TAYM, if you could switch the Chron with any other daily newspaper in America, which one would you chose?

The Angry Young Man

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:57:30 -0800

Brock, I don't see how it could hurt...

Brock Keeling

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:50:58 -0800

TAYM, I don't think having the paper turn into a pillar of salt will help them.

The Angry Young Man

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:48:13 -0800

Real cities have real newspapers. Pity SF isn't one of them. Maybe now that Bronstein will be taking on broader strategic responsibilities, he'll force the Comical to stop acting like a blog, shut down the comments section on SF Gate, fire Cecilia M. Vega, and strongly encourage the Comical staff to act like journalists and actually start writing a newspaper. I'm not holding my breath...

Generic

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:47:55 -0800

As biased as the Chron is, it could be much, much, much worse.

KatyG

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:42:52 -0800

Eve, what made you change your mind? The Chronicle certainly hasn't improved lately...

Eve

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:40:52 -0800

Ah, warsux, I was once like you.

mpantone

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:12:56 -0800

Bring back Warren Hinckle!

warsux

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:09:23 -0800

god i wish the chronicle didn't suck so much. we'd have a better city if we had a decent daily newspaper. we really would.