There were a couple of big changes for the Bay Guardian this week. We and our sister newspapers within San Francisco Media Company — San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly — moved into the Westfield Mall. Yes, the mall, but in the fifth floor business offices formerly occupied by the San Francisco State University School of Business extension program.
The company, owned by Black Press in Canada and Oahu Publications in Hawaii, also named Glenn Zuehls as the new publisher and Cliff Chandler (who worked for the Examiner for years) as the senior vice president of advertising. Zuehls, who comes from Oahu Publications, replaces Todd Vogt as the head of SFMC. Zuehls and Chandler told the staff of all three papers that their primary goal is to grow the company’s revenues, a point that Black Press CEO Rick O’Connor also echoed during the annoucement this morning: “It’s all about revenues.”
Oahu Publications President and Publisher Dennis Francis will also serve as president of SFMC, which now has the same owners as the Black Press and Oahu Publications after Vogt’s ownership interest was bought out by his partners in May. The combined company owns newspapers throughout Canada and Hawaii, as well as around the continental US, including Seattle Weekly and the Akron Beacon Journal.
Editorially, the Bay Guardian remains an independent publication under the leadership of Publisher Marke Bieschke and Editor-in-Chief Steven T. Jones, yours truly.