East Bay papers downsize

[HanSenSE]

Durkin and Jerry .McDonald do the heavy lifting on the Raiders beat. I suspect regular Raiders coverage won't be part of a weekly Tribune.

 

[Tarheel316]

Oakland Tribune to Become a Weekly | Seven Days | East Bay Express.

Oakland Tribune among three papers to become community weeklies, Contra Costa Times and what's left of the Trib to become full region's daily as East Bay Times.

As an Alameda native, I'm stunned by this. Very sad news.

 

[DanOregon]

The odd thing is, when Singleton bought the Tribune - the masthead was the most valuable thing he got in the transaction.

 

[HanSenSE]

The odd thing is, when Singleton bought the Tribune - the masthead was the most valuable thing he got in the transaction.

True. And come to think of it, making the community weeklies part of the daily product is right out of the playbook of Dean Lesher when he built up the Contra Costa Times.

 

[LanceyHoward]

Will there be three dailies left in the San Francisco area? BANG will operate a South Bay daily and an East Bay daily while Hearst has the San Francisco Chronicle?

 

[SnarkShark]

Will there be three dailies left in the San Francisco area? BANG will operate a South Bay daily and an East Bay daily while Hearst has the San Francisco Chronicle?

Don't forget the dogshirt San Francisco Examiner. Also, the IJ in Marin is still around, right? Or was that part of the downsizing?

 

[wicked]

I was in SF last week. I was impressed by all the newspaper boxes near my hotel (near SFO). Guess many of those will go empty soon.

 

[HanSenSE]

Don't forget the dogshirt San Francisco Examiner. Also, the IJ in Marin is still around, right? Or was that part of the downsizing?

Yes it is, but I believe it's a BANG paper as well. Which leaves a few locally concentrated papers in Santa Rosa, Napa, Fairfield, ect. Is the Berkeley Daily Planet still around?

 

[dirtybird]

Having done a little stringing for them back in the day, got this sucks. I mean, a lot of those papers were running almost the same content under different mastheads, but there's always something else to cut I suppose.

 

[DanOregon]

I realize I don't understand the financing of the initial sale, but given that ANG was taken over by Digital First after Singleton couldn't make the debt payments and is run by a hedge fund, had the debt of the MediaNews buying spree been fully discharged and written off? Does Digital First operate with a "clean slate" or do they still have debt to service?

 

[HanSenSE]

http://abc7news.com/news/bay-area-newspapers-print-their-last-editions/1276130/

 

[DanOregon]

Odd that they used an Oakland deadline, considering neither paper is printed there.