NYT and WSJ coming to San Francisco

[thatsrightimirish]

A possible sign of trouble ahead for the Chronicle and other regional papers.

"Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are planning to introduce San Francisco Bay Area editions, hoping to win new readers and advertisers there by offering more local news, in what could be the first glimpse at a new strategy by national newspapers to capitalize on the contraction of regional papers."
"The Journal expects to start its San Francisco edition in November or December, adding a page or two of general-interest news from California, probably once a week, produced by the large staff it already has in the Bay Area. This is different from previous efforts by The Journal to publish regional editions, which had focused on local business news. The paper, based in New York, is also looking into creating a New York edition, with emphasis on adding coverage of the arts, but that plan is not as fully developed."
"I think the San Francisco area is the most obvious market to try this in, because it’s big, it’s sophisticated and it’s getting progressively more poorly served by its papers,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute. But if the strategy takes off in multiple cities, he said, the national papers should worry that “they’d be seen as administering the final death blows to these metro dailies.”
While I like reading the New York Times, I hope their local coverage is good or I don't think it will be worth it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/business/media/05journal.html?_r=3&partner=TOPIXNEWS&e

[Craftsman]

1. Newspapers are in trouble almost everywhere.