New SF Gate is still a Massive Pain in the Ass To Navigate

Massive tech glitches still plague the Chronicle's new-look website, SFGate.com, which continues to mystify the Hearst, (corporate owner), big suits who've invested millions in the re-brand and are reportedly steamed over its persistent problems.

To wit:

Visiting the site can be a harrowing experience; once there, some operating systems, (like mine), immediately freeze. On some computers, it takes over five minutes for SF Gate to load and be workable. What was once an easy, albeit archaic method to sign on now is fraught with tech issues like the simple act of navigating stories. That process has now become an adventure and requires loads of patience. The Bay Area Gate consumers seem pretty irritated too.

This is embarrassing for Hearst which is trying desperately to make The Gate profitable and a means to go after the all-encompassing digital advertising. This humongous technical cluster blank is certainly not helping matters.

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SF Chronicle Introduces a New, Sharper-Looking SF Gate Website

 The Chronicle rolled out a new, cleaner, sharper SFGate-- its web portal, and it looks pretty good from this observer.

The new look, which debuted early Saturday morning has new graphics, a bolder type face and a considerably better-looking, more modernized layout with a lot more color too.

SF Gate was due for an overhaul and it appears, early on, the Hearst people, (who own the Chronicle), got it right.

The Gate is among the top-10 most-visited newspaper web sites in the country--the real question, and this is the 64 million dollar question among most on-line and off-line newspapers--can SF Gate eventually turn a profit?

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The Future of the San Francisco Chronicle; Up in the Air? Friday Opener

 I was talking to a columnist in town not so long ago and he predicted, matter of fact, that the Bay Area would become a one-newspaper town. He didn't say what paper but from all indications it would not be the SF Chronicle. (He didn't work for the Chron).


Which got me to thinking: What about the future of the paper? Without the vast financial pockets of the Hearst Corporation, (which owns the paper), would the Chronicle even be around now? Probably not and this isn't a sudden phenomenon in the newspaper business. Most newspapers are dying and the only ones that are surviving are behemoths like the Wall Street Journal and only marginally, the NY Times. And both of those survive mostly from their pay wall web sites, which are one of the few that are profitable.


The Chronicle and more specifically, SF Gate. com (its website), has tried the pay wall route in various forms but it never worked. The Gate is immensely popular, (even with the largely soft news and  image-friendly real estate porn), but according to most industry people, has never turned a profit. Matter of fact I heard the Chronicle loses several millions of dollars a year.


As a consumer of news myself I buy the paper. I still like the feel of actual newsprint but I also read SF Gate too. I couldn't imagine San Francisco without the Chronicle but then again if it continues to lose the millions it reportedly does, how can Hearst keep it going? There has to come a point.


Do you all still read newspapers or is it Internet only? Or like me, both. I'm interested in your response.


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