Bay Area News Blues

"We have bought the crown jewels of Knight Ridder" -- MediaNews head Dean Singleton quoted in Paul Farhi's October/November 2007 American Journalism Review article "San Francisco News Blues." http://ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4404Singleton was referring to the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, which he had just bought (via the McClatchy company).He called the two excellent papers, which MediaNews execs expected to make better.Or perhaps he meant smaller, Farhi writes in the article that looks at the blows Bay Area journalism recently has taken -- many of them below the belt.Consider this: Less than a year after MediaNews exec Kevin Keane, who is in charge of most of the group's Bay Area papers, promised no layoffs (''addition by addition, not by subtraction" he repeatedly said and wrote in a slew of announcements), the Merc's staff had shrunk by 22 percent.