OK, we’re not sure what to believe. The Chron execs a few months ago who were threatening to close down their paper, and now — according to our friends at the SFWeekly — the paper is profitable? Did Darth Vader (Publisher Frank Vega) totally fool the Guild? No, it couldn’t be that simple. Who could trick veteran journalists like that? Anyway, here’s a paragraph from Joe Eskenazi’s piece in the SF Weekly:

[M]ore than half a dozen longtime Chron scribes tell us that
management has happily boasted to them the paper is profitable once
again — they’ve been having good weeks, good months, and top execs
even supposedly crowed about having a whole profitable quarter to close
out 2009. That was ostensibly the paper’s first quarter in the black
since the Hearsts took over in 2000. Yet now that things are supposedly
a bit less financially apocalyptic, management has clammed up. Chron president Mark Adkins gave us the official “no comment” on releasing any financial numbers. For Chron management, apparently, good news is no news.

Michael Cabanatuan, a longtime Chron reporter and the president of the California Media Workers Guild, said that the paper’s staff is only 40 percent of what it was at this time last year. “We’re still here and we’re still putting out a good product. But it’s less of a product and a different product than it had been,” he said.