Ongoing decline of the Chron's restaurant coverage

Americas - USA West San Francisco Bay Area
1

I noticed yesterday that they apparently stopped updating the restaurant database. It’s hard to put a precise date on it since the search function is semi-broken, but I think they stopped sometime in 2014.

This week they apparently dropped the Inside Scoop page, which wasn’t getting updated very often. That URL is now redirected to the Food page.

Inside Scoop was largely a front page for the blogs by Chron food writers, which seem to be dead. Bauer’s last blog post was in January, Justin Phillips’s last was in March.

I never see the print edition. Does anyone other than Bauer write actual reviews any more?

2

The Sunday travel section about Sacramento had stories about the bar scene, restaurants and most interesting to me, markets. The restaurant mini-reviews by Allen Pierleoni had no prices or stars, just a list of “must-haves.” Basically a puff-piece.

3

Allen Pierleoni wrote for the Sacramento Bee until he was laid off in May.

The Chron has been supplementing the material written by their diminished staff with stuff picked up from local web sites such as Hoodline.