The Bay Area‘s largest newspaper publisher, The Bay Area News Group, which serves dozens of communities from the Monterey Bay to Marin County, including the East Bay and Peninsula, is struggling to keep its print editions alive.

According to its editor, in the past 2½ years the Mercury News has lost 34 percent of its daily print subscribers and 19 percent of Sunday subscribers, dropping to 188,000, writes media business analyst Ken Doctor in his Nov. 12 Newsonomics report.

At an early November panel discussion at Stanford moderated by Doctor, Mercury News Executive Editor Neil Chase, who also oversees the East Bay Times for the Bay Area News Group, said the decade-long declines could mean that the newspapers will be out of business by the mid-2020s unless the news organization is able to recapture circulation and ad revenue losses by significantly growing digital audience.

Doctor writes that “101 cities in the epicenter of Silicon Valley, the world’s economic engine, are now covered by a newsroom that has lost nearly 90 percent of what was a 425-person operation 15 years ago.”

The once financially distressed San Francisco Chronicle, owned by the privately-held Hearst Corporation, does not share financial data but says the paper is now profitable.

Newsonomics link: http://newsonomics.com/newsonomics-newspapers-in-name-only-whos-going-to-build-what-comes-next-in-local/