I hope you're right! I would love to read interesting blogs about San Francisco (where I live) and it sure seems like if it would happen anywhere, it would happen here. So far I haven't found any SF-focused blogs that I want to read.
The short of it - unless the paper cuts expenses by somewhere in the range of 50%, Hearst will will sell it. And in this economic climate, that's code for close it; see the Rocky Mountain News (http://www.vimeo.com/3390739) or the Tucson Citizen.
IF the SF Chronicle goes under - making San Francisco the first major metro market without a daily paper - I have no doubt that the displaced journalists and strong startup culture of the area will forge the first steps to a true, information era watch dog journalism.
In short, newspapers need to stop pretending they still cover the news so that the next generation can figure out how to make this work.
And no, citizen journalists and the twitterati are not the answer. Great journalism can only exist when it can support the salary of a great journalist. Otherwise, that journalist WILL go work as a spin doctor for whatever private firm or state government will pay them. I've seen it happen many many times. How can an unpaid citizen journalist match wits with that?
