SFBA journalism news

Let’s talk about media shakeups here. In the past few months, there were massive layoffs at the East Bay Express. Now, San Francisco Magazine laid off friend of our site Luke Tsai.

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Luke Tsai
@theluketsai
](https://mobile.twitter.com/theluketsai)

Some personal news: After about two years as senior editor at San Francisco Magazine, I have been laid off, effective today—leaving, coincidentally or not, zero (0) editorial staff on site at the San Francisco office. I’m pretty good at writing and editing stuff! Please hire me.

1:29 PM · Feb 15, 2019 · Twitter Web Client

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That’s really disappointing. Especially after what happened at EBX. Hopefully Luke Tsai lands at a good place. Best of luck.

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I wasn’t sure where to put these posts, maybe move them to a new thread, “#HireLukeTsai.”

excerpt;:

San Francisco Magazine was profitable — but not profitable enough. It was not clearing the margins the chain would have wished.

I’m serious as a heart attack posting this here: Fascism is afoot in the U.S. And it’s going after the free press first.

  1. Get rid of fact-checkers; the “unwashed” won’t notice.
  2. Get rid of Copy Editors, the 'unwashed" can’t spell or recognize correct sentence construction.
  3. Adopt a bias. Become an advocate. Push hot buttons harder. The “unwashed” will revel in cher for more.
  4. Fake news is good news because it fills up our feeds.

People in the free world were innocents until they had to fight Fascism to the death starting in the 1930s. Welcome to Round 2.

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Too bad the Chronicle and LA Times just hired their critics too.

Sfist.com is back from the grave. Their previous food coverage was more “where to eat” than food culture/politics/criticism, but had periodic media summaries.

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excerpts:

As the Bay Area awaits new San Francisco Chronicle critic Soleil Ho’s debut review — which is expected to drop any day now — let’s take a moment to reflect on these last almost six months without her — well, actually, without any regular, fully funded, three-visit, supposedly anonymous restaurant critic writing reviews and handing out stars.

Eater SF has discontinued its reviews.

Before that, Josh Sens, longtime critic for San Francisco magazine, was told his monthly reviews would be reduced to six a year. (Although now, with the breaking news that his editor Luke Tsai was laid off last week, that number may have unofficially dropped to zero.) It’s tough to tell from Modern Luxury ’s decidedly un- modern website, but it looks like Sens’s last real review was Angler, in November. Actually, no — there was another Mina review: this month’s Trailblazer Tavern, the splashy 7,000-square-foot Hawaiian island in a Salesforce building.

In January, Tejal Rao, the New York Times ’s new LA-based, California-wide critic, published her first review, also of Angler, which, as many remarked, was more profile than experiential opinion.

It looks like we’re putting all our eggs in one basket here in the Bay Area–Janelle Bitker is also joining the Chronicle staff.

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That’s a great win for the Chronicle! Congratulations, Janelle!

Janelle added a number of businesses to Eater’s coverage that would otherwise have been overlooked. I hope someone shepherds, and knowledgeably extends, her content when they anually update lists

Yes, yes. All well and good to be working for the Chron IN THEORY, but when will either of them them actually publish a review?

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Never. Just like Jonathan Kauffman doesn’t write reviews.

Actually, according to The Big Event podcast, Soleil’s first review will be published this week.

I am going to make a bet that she’ll pick a lesser-known restaurant in the Tenderloin, or Mission or in the avenues.

Janelle Bitker’s name has been removed from the byline of her articles at SFEater and replaced with “EaterStaff.”

If it was Eater’s idea, what a sleazy thing to do.

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She’s gonna drop five reviews, all at once, and it sounded like they’ll come out in the Sunday print edition. It was a fun podcast.

Her byline is showing up on the sf.eater.com page as of 9:15 PM.

Glitch, maybe? Rest assured @zippo hasn’t lost it— I saw some inconsistencies a few hours ago that seem to have disappeared!

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I think a glitch makes sense; maybe they were updating her bio for the site or something? (I didn’t look to see if there was info about her new position or wording that moved her from being part of Eater to being a former staffer.)

Five at the same time? She sure is making a statement with her entrance.