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Society of Professional Journalists Chapter Calls for Public Discussion of Hearst Corp.’s Threat to Shutter the San Francisco Chronicle

Contact: Ricardo Sandoval, 415-786-1258; Tom Murphy, 415-924-3364

Feb. 27, 2008 — The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists today called for a public discussion – at the earliest date possible – of the Hearst Corporation’s threat to make deeper newsroom cutbacks or it will close the paper.

The chapter’s board insists that this discussion include the paper’s broad community of leading-edge thinkers, readers and journalists.

The board fears additional cuts will exacerbate what it perceives to be an already growing vacuum of credible reporting and will further limit scrutiny of our public institutions.

“We hold no faith in claims that if it reduces its staff even further, the Chronicle can maintain adequate – much less high-quality – coverage of the myriad issues affecting the lives of Bay Area residents,” said board president Ricardo Sandoval.

The paper, which today employs an editorial staff of 275, has already lost more than half its newsroom workers since Hearst bought the paper in 2000. Then, as now, Hearst vowed to build the Chronicle into one of the best newspapers in the world. Yet Hearst’s inability to succeed during better times raises troubling questions about its ability or desire to manage the Chronicle through the current recession.

A closure would mean losing the largest source of news for hundreds of thousands of readers in the San Francisco Bay Area, a region that leads the world in innovation. To date, this community of creative thinkers has been excluded from discussions regarding the paper’s downward spiral.

The SPJ chapter’s board is acutely aware of the trying business environment within the news publishing industry, and the board notes that Hearst issued its ultimatum on the eve of negotiations with union officials on another round of staff cuts.

“The board takes no position in labor negotiations or in the operation of any paper, but urges the Hearst Corporation to soften its rhetoric and embrace its responsibility to serve its loyal community of readers,” said Sandoval.

The board asks the Hearst Corporation to participate in a high-profile conversation with its community based on the imperative of reinvention, a conversation conducted with an openness and transparency that no paper has dared anywhere else. Our chapter stands ready to facilitate this dialogue in any way it can.

The 100-year-old Society of Professional Journalists is the nation’s broadest-based journalism organization, dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behavior and diversity in the media. The Northern California SPJ chapter in recent years has actively engaged the creative capital of the Bay Area to identify and promote alternatives to the failing business model used by large media corporations.

In the interest of the public good and open government, the chapter is eager to work with its membership and the rest of the media community to develop new business models that will consistently support meaningful, substantive journalism and which demonstrate that high-quality journalism can remain a profession that attracts the best and brightest.

“We encourage broad community support for these emerging models,” Sandoval said. “We urge journalists, foundations, corporations, the public and public officials to join us in finding solutions to this increasingly urgent civic challenge.”

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