seat and applauding wildly; (2) sitting up happily and applauding; (3) sitting attentively; (4) asleep in his seat; or (5) gone from his seat." Another area of note is the architecture column by John King; the Chronicle is still one of the few American papers to present a regular column on architectural issues. The paper also has regular weekly sections devoted to Food & Home and Style. Challenges Circulation has fallen sharply since the dot-com boom peaked from around 1997 to 2001. The Chronicles daily readership dropped by 16.6% between 2004 and 2005 to 400,906; The Chronicle fired one quarter of its newsroom staff in a cost-cutting move in May 2007. Newspaper executives pointed to growth of SFGate, the online website with 5.2 million unique visitors per month – fifth among U.S. newspaper websites in 2007. In February 2009, Hearst chief executive Frank A. Bennack Jr., and Hearst President Steven R. Swartz, announced that the Chronicle had lost money every year since 2001 and more than $50 million in 2008. Without major concessions from employees and other cuts, Hearst would put the papers up for sale and, if no buyer was found, shut the paper. San Francisco would have become the first major American city without a daily newspaper. The cuts were made. In spite of – or perhaps because of – the threats, the loss of readers and advertisers accelerated. On October 26, 2009, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported that the Chronicle had suffered a 25.8% drop in circulation for the six-month period ending September 2009, to 251,782 subscribers, the largest percentage drop in circulation of any major newspaper in the United States. Chronicle publisher Frank Vega said the drop was expected as the paper moved to earn more from higher subscription fees from fewer readers. In May 2013, Vega retired and was replaced as publisher by former Los Angeles Times publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson. SFGate, the main digital portal for the San Francisco Chronicle, registered 19 million unique visitors in January 2015, making it the seventh-ranked newspaper website in the United States. Publishers M. H. de Young, 1865–1925 George T. Cameron, 1925–1955 Charles de Young Thieriot, 1955–1977 Richard Tobin Thieriot, 1977–1993 John Sias, 1993–1999. (First publisher not to be a member of the de Young/Cameron/Thieriot family) John Oppedahl, 2000-2003 Steven Falk, 2003–2004 Frank Vega, 2004–2013 Jeffrey M. Johnson, 2013–2018 Bill Nagel, 2018–present See also San Francisco Chronicle