The San Francisco Chronicle is laying off a full one quarter of its newsroom staff, according to the Los Angeles Times. About 80 union members and 20 management employees will lose their jobs, reducing the Chronicle's editorial staff to about 300. The paper had an editorial staff of 570 in 2000.Wow! That's a whopping 47% reduction in people writing for the "news hole" (the content published in order to get you to read the advertising, which is the real business of a newspaper). How on earth are they going to attract readers with a staff cut so sharply? And what is going to happen to my favorite Chron writers (I do have them, depsite my political differences with the overall tenor of the paper)? The bloodbath has gotten so bad that I have moved to a posture of pity for big city dailies, even the left wing ones (which is to say, most of them).Unlike many big-city newspapers, which have continued to make solid profits despite new-media challenges, the Hearst Co. publication has...(Read Full Post)