[nattyreb]

BUILD AND SUPPORT INDEPENDENT MEDIA!!
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The End of the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper: an interview with Publisher Willie Ratcliffe
part1
by Minister of Information JR
blockreportradio.com


We are sad to break the news that the internationally known San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, two weeks ago, printed its final edition. It is out of the newspaper business, and is transforming into a full-fledged on-line operation, at www. sfbayview. com, which is currently getting over 1 million hits a month.


Personally, I'm sad that it is going out of circulation because who else in the “progressive press” and in the Black press is going to consistently cover Haiti, Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador, France, and Zimbabwe, as well as East Oakland, Hunter's Point, Hurricane Amerikkka, and New York. Who elde is going to give an opportunity to young Black journalist like Aollonia Jordan, Ebony Colbert, Ra'shida Askey, Taiwo Kujichagulia, Majeid Crawford, and Ebony Sinnamon-Johnson or a platform to more seasoned political voices like Mumia abu Jamal, and a number of other prisoners, also Kiilu Nyasha, and Ahimsa Sumchai. Who else in the Black community is going to tell youth about summer jobs and in the same newspaper inform them about the war crimes being committed at Florence Supermax Concentration camp, which is the mainland Guantanamo Bay, or depleted uranium being used by the U.S. Military in Iraq? Who else will talk about the police murders of Cammerin Boyd, Gus Rugley, and Idriss Stelley, Anita Gaye, and Gary King, as well as the Jon Burge Report which details the history of the Chicago police torturing Black people under police lieutenant Jon Burge. Minister Huey P. Newton of the Black Panther Party once said that the Black Panther Newspaper was the life blood of the Black Panther Party, just like when that Black newspaper went out of circulation, this is the end of an era in Black print media in this country.


My guest today is Willie Ratcliffe, the Publisher of the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper who is going to give us some history about the newspaper as well as talk about why he is leaving the newspaper business.


MOI JR: Can you tell us a little bit about the history of the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper and talk about its current status?

W. Ratcliffe: Well the history...back in 1991, we decided to go into news because we felt it would help the African American community to be on the same page with everyone knowing what is going on, because we knew that gentrification, also lack of jazz opportunities, lack of business opportunities. That's real heavy out here in San Francisco and in particular Bay View Hunter's Point. You know we wanted to be able to help people be on the same page, pull together so when they go to meetings they know what to talk about. You know we used to be actually out there going to the meetings, but we couldn't do everything, so we decided to see if we could get the Bay View, and of course Muhammad, (the founding owner) liked what we were doing. People had offered him more money for the paper, and we were able to get it from him because he knew that we would do the things that he would love to do. He just wasn't able to do it. So we hung out there for 16 years, and we were able to get 2 million and two hundred thousand hits per month. And of course Homeland Security has come along and blasted us, and we're getting back up now. We're getting more than a million hits on our website. And that's the way of the future, so we're going over to the website, however it will be better, and we'll be putting out news stories everyday, and all that was going into the paper.


MOI JR: Can we back up a little? You know that there has been a whole bunch of cutbacks in the print newspaper industry around the Bay Area, particularly with the Examiner, within the last couple of years basically shrank its operation. It's barely a shadow of what it used to be. The Oakland Post, another Black newspaper greatly reduced its size.
What is going on in the industry, and what caused the San Francisco Bay View after all of these years to close it's doors?

W. Ratcliffe: There is really a down syndrome going on in print media all across the country, and you know, the larger newspapers, they can stand some loses, but they are cutting back too. And for the smaller papers, its going to be pretty-well impossible for them to survive in print media. You know paper is going up. Everything is going up. And even with the larger papers. They had a guy on (the radio) this morning that wrote a book talking about how the New York Times and others, that the only place where they are making a little but of money is on the website. That is something that we always thought a lot about. So that's what's happening out there. I think that you are going to see newspapers falling like flies especially the smaller ones, and its going to get down to where there is very few newspapers out there. Even the ones that are out there are beefing up their websites, and that includes all of the larger papers. It's almost like the housing market. If you can't get none of the advertisers to pay for things, then you can't just keep losing. Last year, we lost $248,000, that's right at a quarter of a million dollars. And like I said, we have been losing every year. Imean it wasn't as heavy, but in the last 3 years its really got heavy on the losses. So we had to move. The industry is suffering.