[classicman]

San Francisco May Be Largest City to Lose Main Paper


By Greg Bensinger

Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- San Francisco may become the largest U.S. city to lose its main daily newspaper after Hearst Corp. threatened to sell or close the Chronicle unless it can push through more job cuts.

The publisher, already trying to sell the Seattle Post- Intelligencer, said yesterday that it would seek voluntary buyouts for a “significant” number of its 1,500 employees after the San Francisco Chronicle lost $50 million last year. The announcement follows two newspaper owners filing for bankruptcy protection since Feb. 21.

“The Chronicle plays an important role in our civic life and we don’t want to see this treasured institution close its doors,” San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said yesterday in a statement. The California city is the nation’s 14th largest, with an estimated 744,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Publishers including New York Times Co. and Gannett Co. are cutting costs and seeking to sell assets after forecasting further declines in print advertising sales. Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, publisher of the Inquirer, and Journal Register Co. filed for bankruptcy protection to reorganize their debt.

Industrywide print advertising sales suffered their worst plunge in at least 37 years in the third quarter, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Newspapers haven’t managed a gain since the first three months of 2006.