As local, national, and worldwide print publishing continues to take a brutal, Christ-like thrashing -- take, for example, the San Jose Mercury News' recent layoffs and a 30% drop in the San Francisco Chronicle's daily circulation -- the time-honored watering hole for "crusty but benign" journos, it seems, has also taken a beating. The Market Watch report above tries to brings this point home, reminiscing with Michael McCourt from The Washbag, which closed this......

In more pink slip sadness today, San Jose Mercury News (owned by Denver-based MediaNews Group) eliminated 50 jobs. Fifteen newsroom employees and 19 employees from "other parts of the paper" were let go today. Citing a loss of advertising revenue because to the evil Internet, this most recent workforce slashing represents "a cut of about 5 percent" of the over Merc staff. On the flip side, two editors received promotions: Barbara J. Marshman, associate......

After a local jury found SF Weekly guilty of illegal predatory pricing and awarded the local alt weekly a cool $6.39 million (the verdict subject to "treble damages," which bring the total award to $15.6 million), SFBG Executive Editor Tim Redmond tells the harrowing tale of the five-week trial in his own words: But the verdict sends a clear signal to small businesses, independent newspapers and the alternative press that a locally owned publication......

Sigh. A reader writes in to ask? What's the deal with the Guardian going up against the SF Weekly in court? For a multitude of reason, we're not personally touching this lawsuit. (The main reasons being it's confusing, plodding, doesn't involve Barron Hilton.) But seriously, readers, why are mommy and daddy fighting?......

-- Behold! The Infinity apartment! [Curbed SF] -- Welcome Wikipedia to SF with a slew of wacky neighbors and a joint taped to their door, won't you? [Examiner] -- Missing cyclist, James Bronstein, found dead. [SFGate] -- BART wants you to save Darfur. [Civic Center Blog] -- UC Berkeley searching for a hooded man in connection with recent arson activity. [SFGate] -- The Gov signs into action a bill forbidding you to light up......

We had a good time going through the recipes and eating stories in Street Food, the new book by wunderkind Tom Kine - that is, when we got over the insane jealousy. He got a book contract to travel for three months and eat all he could! How do we get something like that? We're excited to try his takes on bolani (Afghan flat bread) and Kadu (roast pumpkin paste), which he got from......

Check out our job board here for such sparkling, shiny, and stellar job opportunities as:: -- Volunteer/Intern (And maybe a mole for SFist? Just kidding. Sort of.): [Office of Supervisor Jake McGoldrick] -- Interactive Producer [Clear Ink] -- Experienced Web Hacker [Zivity] -- Creative Development - Marketing [Wells Fargo] -- Experienced PHP/MySQL Developer [Federated Media Publishing, Inc.]......

Much of the decimation of newspapers' revenues from classified ads has been attributed to the proliferation of craigslist, which, to our experience, is a generally cheaper, easier, and more effective place to list open jobs and such. Today we were tooling around digg and we noticed a link to open jobs at San Francisco-based eBay subsidiary StumbleUpon. Huh?...

Remember Marcus Thiele and Kevin Buckley (perhaps this interview will refresh your memory)? They are the co-creators of "The Strange and Many Eyes of Dr. LeFaux," a comic book property that has just landed them in the Top 10 of AT&T and Platinum Studio's "Comic Book Challenge" contest, in which the winner receives a "multi-media development and publishing deal."...

-- Writers With Drinks not only boasts an awesome substance-abuse party, but overlaps it with readings from some of your favorite local and national (that is to say, usually New York City- or LA-based) scribes and novelists. Who knew writers like to drink? But brace yourselves for tonight's edition: an "honest" look at the (dying? dead? necessary?) state of print publishing. Such inky icons as Ben Fong-Torres (from Rolling Stone), Lynn Peril (publisher of......

We told you a few weeks ago about Platinum Studios' "American Idol"-style contest for comic creators, through which the winners will get a "multimedia development and publishing deal" based on their concept. At that time, we spoke to local guys Kevin Buckley and Marcus Thiele about their entry. We've just talked to another local writer/artist team with an entry in the Top 50: Navin Prasad and Chris Weiermiller....

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

Platinum Studios, a comic book publisher (KISS 4k (yes, about the band) and Hero by Night) is hosting a sort of "American Idol" for comic creators. A few of those contestants are from right here in the Bay Area. Kevin Buckley is the writer on this project and an artist in his own right, though Marcus Thiele, his partner, is the artist on their pitch: "The Strange and Many Eyes of Dr. LeFaux." Kevin and Marcus took a few minutes to talk about their art and living in the Bay Area. ...

Head over to Mezzanine for SF360 Film+Club, a monthly series taking films out of the theatre and putting them in the club shows a sexy, bloody, ass-kicking redux of Macbeth, directed by Geoffrey Wright. Complimentary cocktails from 7-8pm, with the film starting at 7:30pm. $8 at the door, 444 Jessie St. Drop by Books Inc in the Castro for a reading with local author Dr. William Lipsky from his book, Gay and Lesbian San Francisco.......

Phillyist Jill (who compiles half of those Week Around The Ists posts for all of us in the Gothamist network) sends along some info about a nationwide memoir contest that they're sponsoring out of Philadelphia -- so those of you frustrated (or successful!) This American Life aspirants, start mining your childhood for poignantly-insightful anecdotes! This is all part of the autobiographical-supporting First Person Arts' Sixth Annual Memoir-Writing Contest, and this year's theme this year is......

It's Sunset Magazine's Celebration Weekend! (For some reason, Sunset Magazine sent this event to our sister site Phillyist instead of us, and Phillyist was kind enough to forward it along.) Stop by their "publishing grounds" at 80 Willow Road in Menlo Park from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for a smorsgasbord of Western-lifestyle events, like live music, cooking events with celeb chefs like Paul Bertolli, a home tour, and -- the main reason why we're......

Hey, Folks, welcome to part two of our APE coverage. The Alternative Press Expo was this past weekend, and there was so much fun stuff we had to break our coverage into several tasty morsels. If you missed part one and want to read about some folks making with the funny, please feel free. In this post, we're focusing on some creators that combine a less obvious type of humor with some great art and a generally longer form of storytelling....

The Alternative Press Expo (or APE) was this past weekend at the Concourse here in San Francisco. The show, which is put on yearly by Comic-Con International, features indy and small press creators of zines, comic books, mini-comics, and more. After getting Larry Young's help to kick off our coverage, we attended on Saturday. We met so many cool people and saw so much neat stuff that we're breaking our experience into several posts. First up: the funny stuff. ...

Mari Naomi is one of the most prolific bay area artists we know-- just when we think she's going to rest for a while she unveils a new set of kick ass clown sumo wrestler watercolors, or tells us she's going to be on TV, at a reading, or putting up a new show. We not only admire her humming bird like motion, we adore her art. Mari will be reading at a Pet Noir event on April 5th at the SF public Library. You can also find volume four of her comic Estrus in stores now. Read on to learn why we're such big fans of this native bay area artist. ...

So what's the latest with those two Asian-American embarrassments of last week, racist Kenneth Eng and Gavin-obsessed Han Shin? Or, as we call them around here, Green Dragon and Purple Glove! The Green Dragon first: A reader passes along the tip that the publishers of Kenneth Eng's sci-fi masterpiece Dragons: Lexicon Triumverate (about dragons armed with machine guns) have pulled his books off the shelves (scroll down) and will delete the book from their website......

Back in 2005, SFist MattyMatt profiled local author Carl Hayes, who'd written an online novel about a Haight Street hipster transitioning into corporate culture. Well, a self-publishing press house has picked up Hayes' book, which can be purchased at fine online bookseller websites and is called The New and Improving Thomas. Adding to the SFist thrills, we've also profiled the man who shot the cover of the book, named Merkley. Here's Merkley's flickr shots of......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to....

So what's going on with this whole newspaper lawsuit and injunction thingy we mentioned earlier? Well, sit right back, grab a beer, and listen up because this is super-exciting stuff. ...

SFist interviews artis Joe Mangrum...

This week's comic reviews could easily just be a long, happy, satisfied sigh. Our recommenders at Isotope Comics have been handing us some fairly heavy titles lately, and so to make up for that, they've given us three delights. A collection of Polly and the Pirates! A brand new ultra-cute Bumperboy! Issue One of the sharp fantasy series Castle Waiting, which has experienced an on-again-off-again publishing for the last 10 years. To those all......

Remember that "Seinfeld" episode where Jerry realizes that no matter what happens, he will always break even? It's the great episode where George decides to do the opposite of everything he normally would do and winds up having great luck but Elaine winds up having a horrible run of bad luck and destroys Pendant Publishing because she can't stop eating jujyfruit and can't open her mouth in time to save everyone. And because all of this, Jerry realizes that no matter what happens to everyone else, he'll always stay the same. Well, that's pretty much summing up the Giants this year. No matter what they do, they seem to be magnetically pulled towards .500. They win a few, then quickly lose a few. They pitch lights out, then get shelled. They score a bunch of runs, then slump. As the song says, "you take the good, you take the bad, and there you have a team that plays golf come October." ...

Wow, it's got to suck when the rights of reporting you'd go to jail to defend contain factual inaccuracies, but that's the case for the beleaguered authors of Game of Shadows. Hmmm. Is it more difficult to self-righteously blog about your First Amendment 'battle' when reporters you're defending are damaging innocent peoples' reputations? The errors in question involve track and field star Gail Devers, who was mistakenly described as having trained with admitted steroid distributor......

Don't know what to do with that formerly-trendy FREE WINONA t-shirt? Just cross out her name and write in "LANCE WILLIAMS AND MARK FAINARU-WADA" in sparkle-pen instead -- the Chronicle's getting ready to send those guys to jail on principle, as the Hearst Publishing legal team files a motion to quash (i.e., ignore) the subpoenas that the US Attorney's office sent out to them to find out just where they got all their juicy secret......

Honest to goodness, we weren't even planning on going to the Wired Rave Awards, much less wandering in uninvited (we've been, it's not all that). We just dropped by to hand off some equipment we'd borrowed to cover the "Mary Carey for Governor" campaign-cum-promotional junket at the Virgin Megastore for another New York-based blog publishing empire (no, not Weblogs, Inc. -- they're based out of Reston, Virginia now). Maybe it was the Thriftown suit and......

Oh, so you think you're SMART, do you? You think you're some kind of Poindexter? Some kind of Einstein? Some kind of vos Savant? Pah! Smarty-pants philosophical musing is no longer the provenance of the eggheads among us, now that Fred van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey are publishing "Action Philosophers!" ... a new series of comic books chronicling the explosive life and leanings of such thinkers as Machiavelli, Marx, Derrida, and Descartes. With their......