SF Chronicle losing biz reporters to buyout offer

Chris Rauber of the San Francisco Business Times reports Thursday that the San Francisco Chronicle business desk is losing at least two business reporters to the paper’s recent buyout offer.

They are business and labor reporter George Raine and biotechnology reporter Bernadette Tansey.

In an e-mail. Raine says his last day at the paper was April 3, and Tansey left a few days before that.

Raine, who also worked at the Salt Lake Tribune and Newsweek, notes that the Chronicle’s reporters and columnist will number less than a dozen, down from 27 in 2000 when the paper merged with the Examiner.

“I was a Business writer at the Examiner for five years, from 1995-2000, and at the Chronicle from 2000 until April 3,” says Raine. “I covered labor, agriculture, retail, advertising, the airlines and, less frequently, the economy, banking and small business.

“As a labor writer, I covered the exodus of seven major unions from the AFL-CIO, and their formation of a new federation, Change to Win; the pitched battle between SEIU and a 150,000-member SEIU Local in California, which continues after the local’s leadereship was ousted and the local was taken over by the international, and many seemingly endless disputes, such as the strike and then lockout of San Francisco hotel lworkers,” he adds. “Officials on both sides appreciated my fair and balanced coverage.”

Read Rauber’s story here.