By Tim Redmond
Very odd item in the World Views blog on sfgate today. Sfist captured the key section:
As this long, memorable and costly – in so many ways, to so many people – year winds down, so, too, is this regular, daily feature of S.F. Gate, the website and related, online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, coming to a close after a run of several years. Numerous other, familiar features of this website will also be disappearing, and a notable number of employees from the S.F.Gate/San Francisco Chronicle editorial team will be leaving the print/electronic newspaper as its editorial-production staff is dramatically downsized.
That’s a strange way for a newspaper to announce major cuts. But wait — the item has been changed! Read World Views now, and all it says is
As this long, memorable and costly – in so many ways, to so many people – year winds down, so, too, is this regular, daily feature of S.F. Gate, the website and related, online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, coming to a close after a run of several years.
The rest of that paragraph has vanished.
I emailed Ward Bushee, the Chronicle editor, to ask him about this, and if he gets back to me I’ll let you know. (I also called Bushee’s line at the Chron, where the voicemail says “you have reached the office of Phil Bronstein, editor.” They need to update the recording.)
UPDATE: Bushee got back to me this afternoon. His comments shed some interesting light on the whole situation:
You are right – this is not a source of reliable and accurate information on SFgate and the Chron. If any of his statements are correct it would be news to me and Michele Slack, VP of SFgate. The column was full of erroneous information and was pulled down by Sfgate editors. It apparently had slipped through without editing. The columnist was a freelancer who was getting poor traffic and was dropped, which is a common practice for ineffective content in all news sites. Michele and her staff are scrupulous about editing before content is posted. But this one slipped through unfortunately. I was out of town when I saw your note and had to catch up with this through Michele. Thanks for checking this out and asking me about it.
So perhaps there are no mass alyoffs on the way at the Chron. I give Bushee credit for getting back to me; his predecessor, Mr. Bronstein, was hard to reach and rarely answered my emails.