The announcement by the Hearst Corp. that it is considering closing the San Francisco Chronicle is a defining moment for startup local journalism projects like The Public Press.
Cuts in the newspaper business across the country have astounded journalists and readers as we’ve contemplated the effects of a vanishing press. The possibility that the San Francisco Bay Area’s most reliable source of news may disappear is sure to catalyze new and existing efforts to come up with alternatives, including new business models and ownership structures.
The Public Press is still in a "shoestring" phase, media-industry blogger Ken Doctor accurately noted in a post today: "SF Chronicle could close. Where’s the well-funded startup Bay Area news site to replace it. Isn’t it about time?"
Just as yesterday it was inconceivable for most of us that a major American city would lack a daily newspaper, it’s hard to imagine that anything or anyone is capable of stepping in to fill the void. So while The Public Press isn’t going to replace the Chronicle anytime soon, it’s easy to see how we might work with other public-media institutions in the Bay Area to supplement whatever emerges from the ashes of the Hearst legacy.
Robert Rosenthal, the former managing editor of the Chronicle and now executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, said the Bay Area without a robust Chronicle "will mean less information for the public, and it will be a setback in terms of keeping a watch on government, business and all the other things that the press has played a crucial role in covering for over 200 years in this country."
The threatened loss of the basic watchdog function of the press is something that journalists have been wringing their hands over for years, but surveys have yet to show that this notion has caught on with the public.
In the March/April edition of Columbia Journalism Review, I have a story written from the fictionalized (but plausible) perspective of 2014. I imagined The Public Press with an editorial staff of 25 — pretty puny by current newspaper standards, but not compared with the 60 journalists I predicted the Chronicle to support.
Now it seems that 60 may have been far too optimistic.
There’s no telling what will happen to the Chronicle in coming weeks. The company said it was seeking "significant" cuts in its operations. If it does not find them, it will seek a buyer. Lacking one, it will close the paper.
A number of writers have speculated today that this announcement could be another in a series of bluffs designed to extract concessions from newspaper unions. But if the company’s claim that the newspaper lost $50 million last year is true, the Northern California Media Workers Guild is the least of Hearst’s worries.
