San Francisco Chronicle faces closure

This is heartbreaking news. The newspaper I grew up reading, SF Chronicle, is facing closure in the wake up continued annual deficits.

Hearst said that the Chronicle lost more than $50 million last year and that this year’s losses to date are worse. The Chronicle has had major losses each year since 2001.

Beyond my own personal attachment to reading the Chronicle, they’ve been around for quite some time. In fact, the closure of such a well-known paper could be a slow actualization of print media losing it’s ground to declining readership and increased Internet resources. Yahoo! News has more in-depth statistics of the Chronicle’s performance and it’s ranking through nationwide circulation.

The paper employs 275 news staff and is the 12th-largest in the United States, according to the U.S. Audit Bureau of Circulations, with average weekday circulation of 339,430. It is the 19th-largest paper by Sunday circulation.

I never realized how big the Chronicle was and had always looked at it like my small local paper. Something else to be proud about as a San Franciscan.