Discover

The '''San Francisco Chronicle''' was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young.^[3] The paper grew along with San Francisco to become the largest circulation newspaper on the West Coast of the United States by 1880, and today is Northern California's largest newspaper, serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area, but distributed throughout Northern California, including the Sacramento area and North Coast.

Contents

History

Notes

External links

History

Between World War II and 1965, thanks to new editor Scott Newhall and colorful columnists including Pauline Phillips, who wrote under the name "Dear Abby," Charles McCabe, and Herb Caen, the newspaper grew in circulation to become the city's largest, overtaking the rival ''San Francisco Examiner''.
The de Young family controlled the paper, via the Chronicle Publishing Company, until July 27, 2000, when it was sold to Hearst Communications, Inc., who owned the ''Examiner''. Following the sale, the Hearst Corporation transferred the ''Examiner'' to the Fang family, publisher of the ''San Francisco Independent'' and ''Asian Week'', along with a $66 million dollar subsidy^[4]. Under the new owners, the ''Examiner'' became a free tabloid, leaving the ''Chronicle'' as the only daily broadsheet newspaper in San Francisco.
As of 2005 the publisher of the ''Chronicle'' is Frank J. Vega, the executive vice president and editor is Phil Bronstein and the editorial page editor is John Diaz.
The online version of the newspaper, SFGate, is led by vice president Peter Negulescu and news director Vlae Kershner. As well as publishing the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' online, SFGate adds other features not available in the print version, such as blogs and podcasts. SFGate was one of the earliest major market newspaper websites to be launched, having done so in 1993.
The paper has received the Pulitzer Prize on a number of occasions. Despite an illustrious and long history, the paper's news reportage is not as extensive as in the past. The current day ''Chronicle'' has followed the trend of other American newspapers, devoting increasing attention to local and regional news and cultural and entertainment criticism to the detriment of the paper's traditionally strong national and international reportage, though the paper does maintain a Washington DC bureau. This increased focus on local news is a response to the competition from other Bay Area newspapers including the resurrected ''San Francisco Examiner'', the ''Oakland Tribune'', the ''Contra Costa Times'' and the ''San Jose Mercury News''. Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada received the 2004 George Polk Award for Sports Reporting.^[5]
Fainaru-Wada and Williams were recognized for their work on uncovering the BALCO scandal, which linked San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds to performance-enhancing drugs. While the two above-named reporters broke the news, they are by no means the only sports writers of note at the Chronicle. The Chronicle's sports section--called ''The Sporting Green'' as it was once printed on green-tinted pages--is staffed with two dozen writers. The section's best-known writers are its columnists: Bruce Jenkins, Gwenn Knapp, Scott Ostler, and Ray Ratto.
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 & Garden', and 'Wine', the latter of which is unique. The Sunday editions contain a ''San Francisco Chronicle Magazine'' that regularly focuses on the previously mentioned topics. In early 2006 a new section, '96 Hours', was added to the Thursday edition of the paper, covering entertainment from that day through Sunday.
Circulation has fallen precipitously since the heyday of the dot-com boom from 1997 to 2001. The Chronicle's circulation dropped by 16.6% between 2004 and 2005 to 400,906;^[6] in 2006, daily circulation dropped to 373,805.^[7]
In response, the newspaper has cut back on local news coverage and takes many national and international stories from the Associated Press instead of relying on ''Chronicle'' correspondents. There have also been major cutbacks in staff, with one fourth of the newsroom being let go in 2007. At the same time, the online edition has continued its growth and in 2006 SFGate was fifth among U.S. newspaper websites with 5.2 million unique users per month.

Notes

1. Circulation at the Top 20 Newspapers
2. 2007 Top 100 Daily Newspapers in the U.S. by Circulation
3. 134 Years of the Chronicle Carl Nolte
4. Examiner fires most of staff
5. George Polk Awards for Journalism press release
6. Circulation of U.S. weekday newspapers takes 2.6% hit Chronicle leads pack with 16.6% decline during 6-month period Tom Abate
7. Fewer readers of papers Circulation drops at daily publications again nationwide Carolyn Said

External links

★ SFGate: Online version of the newspaper, contains freely searchable archive of all articles since 1995

★ Hearst subsidiary profile of the ''San Francisco Chronicle''