Why Is There No Bay Area Guide Online?
We knew that Hearst’s moves in Seattle — saying in early January that it would sell or close down the Post-Intelligencer — was just a dry run for San Francisco. After all, the Hearst-owned Chronicle has bled more than a quarter of a billion dollars by most estimates since Hearst bought it in 2000. Now that’s pre-recession loss. If we say the storm of recession is taking down the weakened trees, we’d have to say that it will of course take the fallen timber with it. It’s been an amazement, really. How could you use a quarter of billion dollars publishing a monopoly daily in one of the most affluent cities and metro areas, in and around San Francisco? You can point to the unsolved issues of combining the old Chron and the Examiner, but still. You can point to the belief that the Chronicle has always been a better features product than a news one. You can point to the endless dance around who would run SFGate, the Chron’s site. You can point to a lot of things, but still it’s an amazeme
