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In an odd and somewhat unprofessional manner, the Chronicle announced yesterday that, well, it's imploding. (While layoffs at the Chron are no surprise, the dialing down of SFGate as a whole, however, is.) At least according to World Views second to final post.
As this long, memorable and costly - in so many ways, to so many people - year winds down, so, too, is this regular, daily feature of S.F. Gate, the website and related, online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, coming to a close after a run of several years. Numerous other, familiar features of this website will also be disappearing, and a notable number of employees from the S.F.Gate/San Francisco Chronicle editorial team will be leaving the print/electronic newspaper as its editorial-production staff is dramatically downsized.
Really, this is too bad, since World Views proved to be both informative and entertaining.
We asked former SFist editor Eve Batey, who just left The Chronicle as Deputy Managing Editor for Online to start her own venture, about World Views. She tells us that "the blog was always a solid performer, both traffic and audience engagement -- it had a loyal following of commenters." Batey goes on to say that Amy Moon, World Views' editor, is leaving the Chron at the end of the year, so perhaps they couldn't find anyone to take over that specific responsibility? In the end, we will miss it.
As Chron Editor Ward Bushee said on NPR a few weeks ago, a big part of the Chron's content strategy focuses on non-web readers, so this recent announcement is definitely consistent with the plan as Ward outlined it. And, hey, there are a lot of papers out there with no plan at all, so, you know, maybe he's that's something.
Update: The bold section in the quote above has since been removed from the original post.
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I noticed a brand new, shiny SF Chronicle newspaper box on the block of Main Street between Harrison and Folsom appear last week in my corner of Rincon Hill ... I thought those types of boxes were on their death beds in favor of the huge, multi-publication boxes appearing downtown. (shrug)
I hope the Chronicle figures out a way to survive ... democracy needs full-time journalists (preferably residents of the town they're reporting on). Citizen journalists have 20 other things going on, typically.
As Chron Editor Ward Bushee said on NPR a few weeks ago, a big part of the Chron's content strategy focuses on non-web readers
Oh, how precious! Everyone must read that Snitch piece to see what Ward's planning on doing. Oh, okay, I'll summarize: He's going to charge old people more to read the paper.
That's it.
I always want to cheer when I hear about the seemingly decades-long death rattles of the Chronicle, 'cause it's really an embarrassingly bad paper o' record. However, it's not as tho the Chron's disappearance would clear the way for a better paper to step in. Unless, somehow, one of those new dailies got an infusion of serious funding. (&, actually, those dailies—the City Star & the Daily—are surprisingly good, despite their total lack of Web presence.)