The Bay Guardian --after 48 years, is shutting down. The reason: no money.Does anyone care? I do. For the love of life.
SFist says some staffers say the left-wing alt will live on in some form. Translation: It's still shutting down.
The Guardian in its early days offered inspired journalism and thought-provoking writing on a variety of subjects, most notably its coverage of San Francisco City Hall. And although it had a tendency to consistently go way over the top on its advocacy style, it was nevertheless worth the price of admission: free. The print edition was a lively read and the restaurant reviews and club listings were one of a kind.
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I do miss the Berkeley Barb
ReplyDeleteThe San Francisco Call-Bulletin, NOW there was a newspaper!
ReplyDeleteWho?
ReplyDeleteBummer!
ReplyDeleteI care.
I never read it. My outside impression...and I could be wrong....was it was just a bunch of Karels writing a newspaper for Karels that was read by Karels with the common theme that we all hate anything not Karel like. Oh, and vote Democrat no matter how much they wreck the state. Did I get anything correct?
ReplyDeleteNope. not a word.
DeleteThese other comments about how the paper preached open borders....good riddance.
DeleteWas Berkeley Barb the local prostitute like Kelly DD?
ReplyDeleteIt was lacking in the sex ads department the last few years. Some suggestive ads but not anything that made it really stand out (if you catch my drift).
ReplyDeleteEven though it still publishes, I miss the old East Bay Express. Gammon has turned it into an apology for Jean Quan and a running anti police commentary.. The kind of investigative reporting of old has no place in it today. It used to be a fair and balanced lefty paper and now it's more fringy. Occupy Oakland's bff.
ReplyDeleteI remember when Bruce Brugmann spoke to my journalism class at Stanford in the early 1970's. He said his philosophy was to "tell the truth and let the facts fall where they may."
ReplyDeleteHe must have been on the college circuit - he spoke to my Journalism class at Cal State Hayward (now East Bay) in the early 70's as well - don't remember exactly what he talked about - but still remember that he spoke -
DeleteI used to enjoy their front page or cover page artwork. Then, it became too much like the RollingStones, anti christian, anti capitalist, broadly pro-abortion, broadly open borders at any cost. Too smug and predictable. Same story for the east bay Express. Same thing for the Daily Californian. I can't remember the last time I picked up the Daily Californian. It may not be in print anymore. There is a sense of community gotten from newspapers that you almost cannot get from online news. I suspect in about seven to ten years, some printed news papers will experience a revival, especially in large towns that are not terribly famous, such as San Rafael and Novato.
ReplyDeleteBut ant-Christianity is a good thing.i
DeleteNope. No print revival. The cost of printing, the cost of a printing press (or the cost charged to print your newspaper) and the cost of distribution are all costs that can no longer be paid for via advertising.
DeleteEven if gas prices bottom even more, it will not be long-term. Delivering newspapers by vehicles was a stop-gap measure that lasted years but which was part of the multiple issues that doomed print newspapers.
However, that said, I do believe that community newspapers will return to more small towns in the future, as those residents realize they lack true local coverage, but I'm not sure if that includes the Bay Area where neighbors do their utmost to avoid each other and there is such a lack of community in most communities. Sure, there may be a core "community," but newspapers need scale.
Community newspapers online in the future will not make it off of Google Adsense. It will be off of local ads from local businesses ~ assuming there are local businesses. If there are only chain stores that dominate, forget it; you won't have a revival unless a person who can afford to lose money supports a newspaper financially, and then that brings all kinds of potential conflicts that I've personally lived. I still did my job, but it was painful and you lose the support or your owner who can jettison the publication or make life difficult at any time.
I'm from a small town, and I'm a newspaper guy (both publisher an editor).
Something else that was shut down; The Tom Sullivan Show. He was here for a few weeks after Snowy, I mean Frosty, and now, no Tom Sullivan. I guess he doesn't fit the Bloomberg Templete of being anti-gun, and pro- Value Added Tax.
ReplyDeleteTom Sullivan was on960 and since Bloomberg took over they don't have any talk show host on. He was on 910 I think more than a year ago, anyway his show is syndicated you can probably download it, also he is on 1530 am Sacramento from noon to 3 p.m. I can get 1530 in Contra Costa County, and when I lived in Benicia I could get the station there as well, I can also get 1530 on Peninsula on my car radio.
DeleteI don't know that I will miss the Bay Guardian, haven't read it for years. However the in eighties and nineties when I use to go into San Francisco almost once a week, I would often pick up a copy, and enjoyed it. It was especially a good paper to find out what was going on in the local club scene, and it often had interesting articles, even if you didn't agree with their view.
I worked for the EX for several years, and under the current parent company until a few months before it acquired the SFBG and know a handful of good folks still there, and some who were until today. The writing has been on the wall for a while (two alt-weeklies in a medium-large city is a bit of an anomaly these days, especially when they have the same cost-cutting owner), but I was hoping it could be turned around somehow. End of an era.
ReplyDeleteNO, and who are they anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDelete5:16 - hilarious! You nailed it. That is all totally true. And Rich - no. Nobody cares.
ReplyDeleteI used to REALLY enjoy Dan Leone's 'Cheap Eats' column a few years ago. Was more humor and self loathing than restaurant review, but it was enjoyable. The rest ? Meh... being an east bay moderate, the rag didn't appeal that much more to me. A few good articles here and there (from my perspective) but not for me.
ReplyDeleteI guess the answer to your question, "Does anyone care?" is, no, but that's probably by design. The latest owners reduced the paper to irrelevancy, somehow thinking they could squeeze out a profit by cutting all costs related to producing anything worth reading. Gosh, and that plan has worked so well at other newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations! Is this all that business schools are teaching?
ReplyDeletePapers such as the Guardian played an important role in our society, but now a dumbed down, less informed America chooses not to read newspapers as often, and as a result, we get less information and less diversity of opinion. Meanwhile the 'corporatization' of our media continues, with downsizing, outsourcing, and consolidation. But do most Americans, especially those under 40 care? Seemingly not, as evidenced by the growing numbers of brain-dead clones who walk around totally uninvolved in their immediate surroundings, unable or unwilling to even gold a conversation with a fellow human being. With their ear buds in, and their eyes fixed on the tiny screens of their smart and I-phones, their fingers dance frantically over tiny keyboards as they merrily text, tweet, facebook and instagram away. No wonder America is going into the shitter!
ReplyDeleteNo.Just another example of liberal garbage that is out of style.
ReplyDeleteI was getting coffee this morning at when an old hippie type joined some other old hippie types at the next table. Without even saying Good Morning, he launched into a diatribe about corporations avoiding taxes, something about PBS screwing up, the evils of income inequality, the wealthy trying to hide in gated communities and the campaign of hatred waged by the GOP. He covered all of this in about 10 minutes at 6:45 in the morning. I typically vote Dem, but if the Guardian was as tedious as this guy, I'm not surprised people weren't reading it.
ReplyDeleteWho cares. The current tech boom and "economic cleansing" of SF continues to have a positive effect. Finally, new blood (gentrification) is actually resulting in meaningful change to the political fabric of SF, combined with the fact that young libertarian Millennials just aren't buying into stupid uber partisan dogma (to the LEFT or the RIGHT!!) -- much to the dismay of the old hippie guard. The Guardian is irrelevant and has been for a long time.
ReplyDeleteThis is true, 1:50. I have two sons, both in grad school at the University of California. They're both Rand Paul supporters and say that I'm too liberal.
Delete1:50 anan....What a sad, cynical, person you are! I guess you don't care about any traditions or important facets of our country that have been fast disappearing. The 'economic cleansing' that you seem to cherish with an almost fervent enthusiasm has dramatically changed this country, and whether that turns out for the good or the bad remains to be seen. But blithely labeling and then dismissing things that have been a significant part of our American culture in the manner you do doesn't say much for you as a person. Very sad! You must have had a rough childhood or perhaps you're just naturally a bitter person?
ReplyDeleteMother Jones is next.
ReplyDelete2:17 ... How ironic for an obvious liberal progressive to be whining about our country losing its traditions and culture. Change is a part of life, deal with it.
ReplyDeleteHey 10:39, Shut up you moron. FYI, I don't know where you come up with the idea that labeling me as a 'liberal progressive' (and by the way, what the hell is wrong with that?) is an insult. Liberals pushed for Civil Rights, Environmental Regulations, safety in the work place, a woman's right to choose, and regulation of big business. What is wrong with any of those things? Look at the last 100 years and who are considered the great leaders in this country by historians? Not Harding, Coolidge, Eisenhower, Nixon or the Bushes, that's for sure. Conservatives supported the 'Black-list' days of Joe McCarthy, and were against Civil Rights for black Americans. They also pushed for escalation of the war in Vietnam, and another useless, wasteful war in Iraq. Yeah, I guess that disgraceful legacy is something you can be proud of!
ReplyDelete10:19, it's 10:39 again. Listen, loose cannon ... and I think we all know EXACTLY who you are. You are a dumbass with a persecution complex, because nobody except you saw my use of the term "liberal progressive" as a pejorative. I was simply using it as a comparison because it's usually right-wing conservatives who are blathering on about us losing our culture and traditions, and the progressives are the ones pushing for change. As to the rest of your assessment, if you want to get in to a tit-for-tat, the Democrats were the party of slavery, jackass. Both parties have a mixed legacy, so take your uber partisanship and shove it up your ass.
ReplyDeleteHey 8:13 anon, That was over a hundred and 50 years ago idiot, so I think you know that the Democratic Party has changed a bit since then. The GOP was also a different party at that time, so any historical comparison is irrelevant. But don't let facts get in the way of a good argument!
ReplyDelete9:53, you are a partisan douche. Let's take the Vietnam War, which 10:19 tried to blame on the Nixon administration while totally ignoring the role LBJ played from the Gulf of Tonkin onward. Let's take the Iraq war resolution, which was supported by most of the top Democratic senators including Clinton, Feinstein, Biden, Kerry, Schumer, and Reid. Hardly solo product of Bush-Cheney. So if you want to talk about facts, then let's talk about facts, you stupid one-sided hack.
ReplyDelete9:53 anon, you can spin it anyway you want to, but the fact is that the GOP has fewer good leaders and has done far more damage to this country over the years than the Dems. Johnson, for all his faults, (and his escalation of the War in Vietnam was a HUGE mistake that ruined his Presidency), also passed more legislation to help impoverished Americans, and created more jobs and helped clean up the environment than most of his predecessors. Nixon, for all of his faults, at least signed landmark environmental legislation, (the Clean Air and War acts), and opened the doors to China and Russia. He would have been considered "too liberal" by today's reactionary GOP and would have been drummed out of the Republican Party. JFK, despite spending millions during the nuclear arms race, handled the Cuban Missile Crisis much more adroitly than any of the GOP leaders would have at the time, and we avoided going to war with the Russians. Outside of some of Nixon's accomplishments, (Watergate aside), what has the GOP done that is worth mentioning? Deregulation, closing down mental institutions under Reagan and putting hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people on the streets, (how many homeless people were wandering around America before Reagan's administration?) and the attack on Unions and the environment were shameful policies trumpeted by Reagan. And we don't need to get into all the mess that Bush created. He ignored security warnings about a possible attack on America before 9/11, his sidekicks blatantly lied to Congress about "weapons of mass destruction," and he did his best to let Wall Street run amok, setting up the economic meltdown in the fall of 2008. You can spin it anyone you want to, but the facts don't lie. The Repubs haven't had a good President since Teddy Roosevelt, who was considered a 'Progressive' and would be considered a "Socialist" today by the right wing, even though he's worthy of being on Mt Rushmore. You really need to do a little more studying of American history, not just selecting what you want to learn and misinterpreting the facts my friend!
ReplyDeleteDo you really even believe half of what you just wrote, 5:21? I suspect you do, and you claim to care about "facts."
Delete5:21, it's 9:53 again. I have to give you a round of applause for doing such a great job regurgitating leftist memes and half-truths, such as "Governor Reagan closed down all the mental institutions and threw all the mentally ill people out on the street." In 1967, the ACLU pushed a so-called "bill of rights" for those with mental health problems (Lanterman-Petris-Short Act), which was overwhelmingly passed by the DEMOCRATICALLY-CONTROLLED STATE LEGISLATURE. Governor Reagan merely SIGNED THE BILL INTO LAW. How convenient to blame it on Reagan though; it fits nicely into your "heartless right-wingers" agenda -- only it doesn't. You know, extremists like you on the FAR LEFT are just as much a part of the problem as nutcases those on the FAR RIGHT. You are both so entrenched in your stupid "I am right" dogma that you're actually one in the same! And a LOT of us are sick of you all. I sure the hell am. Heck, you should run for Congress -- you'd fit right in with the rest of those fucking idiots.
DeleteHey jerk-off, you're the kind of a person who would run around a cracker box because it says: 'RIP AROUND THE TOP." Why don't you tone down the rhetoric and stop using the foul language? If you can't, then perhaps you could do us all a favor and just go away.
ReplyDelete