The Sacramento Smear Bee has announced it will lay off 10% of its work force in an effort to cut costs. If you’ve been reading my blog since its inception you may recall an article I posted about three weeks ago titled “Is the Sacramento Bee engineering controversy to sell newspapers? Duh.”

OK, I am not claiming to be clairvoyant, but my unpopular opinion about the Bee’s tabloid-style election coverage, and speculation about it being driven by plummeting readership, seems to have had some legs after all. Granted, Bee writers’ knife-like election season missives—and the subsequent public backlash—are symptomatic of a much larger perception problem that has been simmering for years, but they sure didn’t slow the inevitable march towards extinction.

In recent months the Bee has alienated a large number of readers by publishing slanted op-ed pieces disguised as front page “news” articles. One needn’t look further than the glamor-shot stories they published about Heather Fargo, high atop her city hall perch dressed in gold like a regal public servant hard at work—despite her all time low approval rating around the city and well documented suspect use of public funds and dismal attendance record (which the Bee strategically reported months before the vote so it was no longer in voters’ minds on election day).

In talking to people around the city, perceptions of the Bee seem to range from “boring” to “biased,” neither of which are perceptions a struggling newspaper should find acceptable in the digital age. But alas, the Bee buzzes onward aimlessly, unfazed by their own abysmal approval rating, honing their offensive style of tabloid reporting and placing links to their columnists’ misinformed flammable soliloquies on the front page of their online edtion.

I’d love to sit here and tell you I feel sorry for the Bee because they provide a much-needed public service for news-thirsty Sacramentans, but unfortunately I can not because whatever good they have done has been overshadowed by their indiscretions.