Founded in 1966, as one of America's first alternative news weeklies, the San Francisco Bay Guardian is no more.
All the staff have been fired. The website and Facebook page were been shut down as the staff was being fired. http://www.sfbg.com/
Details posted as they emerge.
SF Weekly reporting...
Employees of San Francisco Print Media Company, the parent company of the Examiner, SF Weekly, and San Francisco Bay Guardian were this morning informed that the latter paper will be shuttered after 48 years.
The paper was founded by husband and wife Jean Dibble and Bruce Brugmann — whose visage, urging locals to "Read my paper, dammit" — grew ubiquitous over the years. Its founding mission was to "print the news and raise hell," and, as an independent paper, it did just that for 46 years. In 2012 Brugmann and Dibble sold the Guardian to the San Francisco Media Company, which subsequently acquired the Weekly last year. After decades of lawsuits and acrimony, the dueling San Francisco weeklies were situated next door to one another, within the same office suite.
http://m.sfweekly.com/...
East Bay Express reporting...
The San Francisco Bay Guardian, the alt-weekly that has been "printing the news and raising hell" for 48 years, is shutting down due to money issues, effective immediately, according to an email sent to employees of the San Francisco Media Company (which also owns the San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly) this morning.
"Unfortunately, the economic reality is such that the Bay Guardian is not a viable business and has not been for many years," wrote San Francisco Media Company publisher Glen Zuehls in the email. SFMC took over the paper in 2012. Prior to that, the Bay Guardian was independently owned.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/...
SFist reporting...
According to an email sent to employees of the San Francisco Media Company and shared with SFist, the conglomerate that owns the San Francisco Examiner, SF Weekly, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Guardian will be ceasing publication as of tomorrow's issue.
Dear community: The SF Media Co. has just pulled its funding from the 48 year old San Francisco Bay Guardian. More details to come.
— SF Bay Guardian (@sfbg) October 14, 2014
http://sfist.com/...
KQED, San Francisco's NPR station, just posted an interview with Steve Jones, the (now former) editor of the Guardian.
GOLDBERG: Was there any indication recently this would happen?
JONES: No. We know that the entire San Francisco Media Company was having financial problems. The Guardian was breaking even. We knew that there were some changes that were going to be made, but we were surprised by this. They have immediately shut down everything. They shut down our Twitter feed, they shut down our Facebook, they shut down our website, they shut down our passkeys, they shut down our phones.
They’re aware that there’s a large community out there that’s interested in the Guardian. A year ago when Tim Redmond got forced out, we exposed everything with these owners, and we called on that community. And that kept us strong for the last year. And I think the new corporate owners are wary of us doing something like that again.
KQED