San Francisco newspaper analyst, blogger and venture capitalist Alan Mutter (pictured) has come up with a tool that shows how close newspaper chains are to default. His Default-O-Matic shows that six of the 10 publishers are deemed to be in junk-bond territory. He also notes that the ratings of seven companies have been downgraded in the three months. Mutter uses ratings from Moody’s, which show the bond ratings of MediaNews from B1 to B3. Standard and Poor’s, another bond rating service, on Thursday downgraded MediaNews from B- to CCC. MediaNews is the Bay Area’s largest newspaper publisher.