As you may have heard, San Francisco Examiner owner Todd Vogt has bought up both of the city’s alternative weeklies, SF Weekly and the SF Bay Guardian, and that has meant a variety of changes to the staffs and budgets at the papers. It also means that our city is now losing two full-time critics, as both Virginia Miller and Jesse Hirsch have tendered their resignations at the Guardian and Examiner, respectively. Miller tells Grub Street that she’s moving on to work on her own projects, including freelance work and her food site, The Perfect Spot.
She adds that her byline may reappear occasionally at the paper, but that remains to be seen. Food writing duties will revert to existing in-house staff, including culture editor Caitlin Donohue.
Hirsch, meanwhile, revealed yesterday on Eater that he’s taking a staff writer position at Modern Farmer, a forthcoming quarterly that’s aiming to be a “slicker, chicer Farmer’s Almanac.” He’s also planning an eventual move to upstate New York, which means that New Taste Marketplace is searching for a new organizer.
Hirsch will be replaced by not one but four different people on the Examiner/Weekly staffs, who will share restaurant review duties: Molly Gore, Alex Hochman, Cynthia Salaysay, and Wendy Hector.
That leaves just Bauer, Anna Roth, and SF Mag’s Josh Sens covering the scene, and the occasional pinch-hits at the Chron by Nicholas Boer and Allan Matthews. Oh, and us bloggers.
