The media world has dramatically changed since the Bay Guardians antitrust lawsuit against the SF Weekly went to trial in January 2008. At the time, a Beyond Chron article proclaimed that nothing less than the future of independent media was at stake.

But even the Guardians $15 million damage award could not save it. When Bruce Brugmann made over $2 million in profits from the papers sale in April 2012, he acknowledged, “Publishing is hard now, advertising is not easy. Not everyone is interested in buying newspapers in this country.”

Brugmanns profits came from selling the papers real estate, not its reporting. And last week Village Voice media sold the SF Weekly for a likely smaller sum than its litigation costs in the Guardian lawsuit (it also sold the Seattle Weekly, and is rumored to have the Village Voice on the block).

Todays young people do not need to pick up a newspaper to learn whats happening in the city, as they have smartphones, computers and/or apps. Both papers once made gobs of money from escort and dating ads. But these ads have shifted to online sites, and Village Voice medias current financial crisis stems from its being charged with operating the biggest forum for sex trafficking of under-age girls in the United States.

In the pre-Internet days, cafes were filled with people reading newspapers while drinking coffee. Today, laptops dominate the caf scene, and even novels are read on phones.

The print editions of the Bay Guardian and SF Weekly are not sustainable, and will either merge or keep separate online identities.

The Old Media World

The SF Chronicle continues its print edition despite losing millions annually because of the Hearst Corporations real estate venture with Forest City to develop its large 5th and Mission holdings. Its a lot easier to sell this massive development project if a) the Chronicle can promote it in its print edition and b) the projects office towers can be justified as subsidizing the survival of a print newspaper.

But I have come across nobody in the journalism field who believes that the Chronicles print edition has much of a future. Young people coming to the Bay Area are not becoming subscribers, and whats left of the papers declining circulation base is akin to the national Republican Party—it is disproportionately white, over 60 years of age, and not a leading target of advertisers.

The Chronicles print edition will either lose its independent status and become part of the newspaper groups led by the San Jose Mercury News and the SF Examiner, or be entirely replaced by sfgate.com.

The New Media World

Many argue that the online world is dependent on traditional newspaper content. They look at the many newspaper articles linked or reprinted on the Huffington Post and see old media reporting as driving traffic on online sites.

Yet the Huffington Post could survive quite well in the absence of most traditional newspapers. So could Salon, Politico, Daily Kos and other popular news sites. While the New York Times and other newspapers do provide information and stories vital to public policy debates, this is not a trait usually ascribed to the San Francisco Chronicle or most of the nations daily print publications (which itself is a factor in their declining circulation and revenue).

And while print newspapers disappear, online news sources face their own serious competition from smartphones and social media like Facebook and Twitter. Websites that took readers from traditional newspapers by shortening the news now are challenged by rapidly updated tweets and Facebook postings. This will likely mean even shorter online stories, as people sending texts and working on their own social media accounts are too busy to read longer stories.

I love print newspapers and wish their owners had been more visionary in addressing the challenges of online and social media competition. But the cost conscious owners of the Chronicle, Bay Guardian and SF Weekly are unlikely to invest in the type of real journalism that compels the attention of Bay Area readers—-leaving their print futures even more precarious.

Randy Shaw is Editor of Beyond Chron

Article source: http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/The_Impending_Demise_of_San_Francisco_Newspapers_10848.html

The US Treasury just released its latest “scorecard” on the state of the government’s housing bailout. The numbers are still weak, compared to the overall picture.

In May, 32,398 borrowers got permanent modifications, bringing the total to 731,451, but nearly 98,000 modifications have already gone bad and been canceled. Treasury did put out some interesting new numbers on how many modifications involve principal forgiveness from the banks.

Close to 5,000 “active modifications” have a reduced principal balance of, on average, about $70,000, or 32 percent of the balance. About 16,000 more are in the trial period—kind of a pittance, when you look at the 1.6 million trial modifications started.

Banks tell me they are doing more principal reduction in their own proprietary modifications, but getting that data is, suffice it to say, difficult to obtain.

It is interesting to note that short sales are really ramping up. The Treasury’s report now includes numbers on the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternative program, which gives incentives to servicers and borrowers to do short sales and deeds in lieu of foreclosure. Close to 18,000 of these started, nearly all short sales, and this program is just a few months old.

So, where do we stand?

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43609086?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS