Looks like the San Francisco Chronicle may be stopping the presses. This week, the Hearst Corp announced it was slashing costs and letting staffers go. If the paper can't shore up its losses - it did lose $50 million last year - then Hearst may put the Pulitzer Prize winning paper up for sale or just shut it down. I am pretty disappointed because there truly is nothing like a real newspaper. But oh well, I sure hope the online version (sfgate.com) survives. After all, where would I get my movie reviews without that little man?
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Amazon's Kindle is selling like hot cakes. JP Morgan's Imran Khan predicts Amazon will sell about half a million this year! And, Amazon takes $45 for each Kindle sold. After getting my very own Kindle, I have to admit, this new product is kind of cool. It weighs 10 ounces; has 2 GB of memory and can store 1,500 books of the 230,000 books available in the Kindle 2 Store. And, it fits nicely into my purse. This sure beats walking around the city carrying a tower of books everywhere you go.
See: Amazon's Kindle 2 akin to Apple's iTunes
You're quite right that there's nothing like a real newspaper.
However, economic Darwinism is rescuing the environment. I advised the CFO at the Chronicle, Leo Hindery, Jr. in 1985 that over the next 20 years they would have to move away from paper and their so-called Joint Operating Agency (the real villain in this tragic affair) with the Examiner to stay in business. Leo got hip and into cable TV, and took me with him. The rest of the ownership group was too hung up on tradition and the status that owning a paper-based company lent to their news organization and social milieu. Fast forward 24 years (to the present) and a new ownership family …Unfortunately for the SF Chronicle, its’ egomaniacal and brain dead executive offices has chosen to enlist the power of new presses to improve the look and feel of the newsprint, thus spelling out the certain doom of what might have remained as a good news organization and service enterprise in the internet. However, loaded with the continuing operating expense and resource waste in pumping out billions of tons of newsprint delivered over millions of miles on diesel smoking trucks, all hope is lost. It's not rocket science, just good common sense.