SF Chronicle Food Section Fold-In: Recipe for Disaster?

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Reports in foodie-centric San Francisco that the award-winning Food section of the Hearst-Corp.-owned San Francisco Chronicle may be folded into a lifestyle section is stirring controversy, according to a report in yesterday's New York Times.

Chronicle Publisher Jeffrey Johnson would not comment in the Times article on reports that the Food section would combine with content from the Home section and be part of a lifestyle section tentatively called Artisan.  The Chronicle, a multiple winner of the James Beard Foundation award for stellar food coverage and perhaps the only daily that sells its own honey and maintains a roof garden and test kitchen in a building separate from the newsroom HQ, may be forced into the move--reportedly, by Feb. 2014-- by declining readership and dwindling ad page revenues.

Newspapers once provided food for thought, but among Chronicle readers, the thoughts are about food.