Last year, the San Francisco Chronicle was losing $1 million dollars a week. They also had 60% more staff and used to do their own printing. Well, it looks like the paper’s fortunes may have turned.
Staffers tell the S.F. Weekly that “management has happily boasted to them the paper is profitable once again,” with the last quarter of 2009 being the first in the black since Hearst Corp took over the newspaper in 2000. The massive job cuts have apparently helped bring the paper out of the red. Outsourcing their printing has also saved Hearst $25 million a year.
Management has refrained from talking about their alleged profitability publicly. The staff’s union contract renewal is up later this year.