Death of the old media

The AP reports today that the San Francisco Chronicle is bracing for major downsizing in the wake of its managing editor’s departure:

The San Francisco Chronicle’s managing editor is stepping down as the Hearst Corp.-owned newspaper braces for a round of deep editorial job cuts.

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Rosenthal’s departure comes two weeks after the Chronicle announced a 25 percent reduction in newsroom staff, affecting all levels of editorial employees.

Management told the union it plans to eliminate 80 union and 20 management positions, out of a newsroom staff of about 400, unless the cuts could be made through buyouts and retirement incentives within 30 days.

Publisher Frank Vega said the measure was part of “continuing belt-tightening” to stem financial losses at the paper, which like other newspapers across the country is grappling with plunging print readership and the loss of advertising dollars to the Web.

The Chronicle had an average paid weekday circulation of 386,564 for the six months ended in March, down 2.9 percent from the year-ago period, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Weekday circulation at U.S. daily newspapers overall fell 2.1 percent during the same period.

Before you weep too many tears for the possible demise of the old media, take a look at what now passes for publishable content in this once respected news organ:

It’s just one of those obscure little unreported conspiracy theory-ready hunks of floating White House detritus, a couple of foul-smelling documents no one really wants to touch and no one knows quite what to make of, probably means nothing, probably being misread anyway, all a bit overblown and strange and not all that important and not all that different than the way things are now.

Unless, you know, it’s not. Unless the violent twinge of queasy paranoia crossed with that uncontrolled bout of colon-clenching sighing you experience is deadly accurate and your radar for all things sinister and Rovean is right on target as you read about the delightfully titled National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20, wherein it is calmly and furtively revealed that, in essence, George W. Bush owns your sorry ass.

Or, to put it another way, it looks like the Bumbling One just gave himself ever more power. Power to control and dictate the entire government, power to really spread the gospel of happy GOP incompetence, power to command the entire wobbly American universe should some sort of epic — or not so epic, as the case may be — calamity strike the homeland.

Twenty-five years ago, when my friends and I were all unquestioning young Berkeley liberals, we would see precisely that same type of paranoid, free-style writing in the old Bay Guardian.  This stuff was always good for a laugh if we even bothered to read the front pages before settling down to the real business of the Bay Guardian — personal ads that were alternately amusing, pathetic, romantic, perverted, and generally much more interesting and intelligent than the rest of that paper put together.  The sad fact is, once stuff that used to lurk on the lunatic fringes moves to the mainstream, the mainstream is in deep trouble, as the Chron’s fortunes plainly reveal.