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48-557: John King, the architecture critic of the San Francisco Chronicle , has described the Flood Building as "twelve stories of orderly pomp with a rounded prow that commands the corner of Powell and Market Streets ... Every detail is rooted and right, from the tall storefronts that beckon cable car daytrippers to the baroque cliff of the sandstone façade with its deep-chiseled windows." Baroque revival in style, it

96-749: A $ 66-million subsidy. Under the new owners, the Examiner became a free tabloid , leaving the Chronicle as the only daily broadsheet newspaper in San Francisco. In 1949, the de Young family founded KRON-TV (Channel 4), the Bay Area's third television station. Until the mid-1960s, the station (along with KRON-FM), operated from the basement of the Chronicle Building, on Mission Street. KRON moved to studios at 1001 Van Ness Avenue (on

144-424: A bold and somewhat provocative approach to news presentation. Newhall's Chronicle included investigative reporting by such journalists as Pierre Salinger , who later played a prominent role in national politics, and Paul Avery , the staffer who pursued the trail of the self-named " Zodiac Killer ", who sent a cryptogram in three sections in letters to the Chronicle and two other papers during his murder spree in

192-532: 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

240-540: A declining readership). The newspapers were officially owned by the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, which managed sales and distribution for both newspapers and was charged with ensuring that one newspaper's circulation did not grow at the expense of the other. Revenue was split equally, which led to a situation widely understood to benefit the Examiner , since the Chronicle , which had a circulation four times larger than its rival, subsidized

288-719: A new headquarters at 901 Mission Street on the corner of 5th Street in what is now the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood of San Francisco. It was designed by Charles Peter Weeks and William Peyton Day in the Gothic Revival architecture style, but most of the Gothic Revival detailing was removed in 1968 when the building was re-clad with stucco. This building remains the Chronicle ' s headquarters in 2017, although other concerns are located there as well. Between World War II and 1971, new editor Scott Newhall took

336-558: A number of office vacancies. San Francisco Chronicle 226,860 avg. Mon-Fri circulation The San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California . It was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young . The paper is owned by the Hearst Corporation , which bought it from

384-761: A unique rating system: instead of stars or a "thumbs up" system, the Chronicle has for decades used a small cartoon icon, sitting in a movie theater seat, known as the "Little Man", explained in 2008 by the Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert : "...the only rating system that makes any sense is the Little Man of the San Francisco Chronicle , who is seen (1) jumping out of his 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

432-447: Is a steel-frame building clad in grey Colusa sandstone. A lobby with red marble columns traverses the building from Market to Ellis Street. The wedge-shaped office floors surround a lightwell ; the corridors have white marble flooring and veined white marble walls, and have retained their wooden doors with openable transom windows . It became a San Francisco landmark in 1982. The site formerly housed Baldwin's Hotel and Theatre , which

480-465: Is anchored by Henry Schulman, John Shea, and Susan Slusser , the first female president of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA). The Chronicle's Sunday arts and entertainment insert section is called Datebook , and has for decades been printed on pink-tinted paper in a tabloid format. Movie reviews (for many years written by nationally known critic Mick LaSalle ) feature

528-474: 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. Circulation has fallen sharply since the dot-com boom peaked from around 1997 to 2001. The Chronicle ' s daily readership dropped by 16.6% between 2004 and 2005 to 400,906; The Chronicle fired one-quarter of its newsroom staff in

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576-553: 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 is edited by Christina Kahrl and called Sporting Green as it is printed on green-tinted pages. The section's best-known writers are its columnists: Bruce Jenkins, Ann Killion, Scott Ostler, and Mike Silver. Its baseball coverage

624-413: The Chronicle ' s front page were eliminated. Editor Ward Bushee's note heralded the issue as the start of a "new era" for the Chronicle . On July 6, 2009, the paper unveiled some alterations to the new design that included yet newer section fronts and wider use of color photographs and graphics. In a special section publisher, Frank J. Vega described new, state-of-the-art printing operations enabling

672-619: The Chronicle in 2000. Beginning in the early 1990s, the Chronicle began to face competition beyond the borders of San Francisco. The newspaper had long enjoyed a wide reach as the de facto " newspaper of record " in Northern California, with distribution along the Central Coast , the Central Valley , and even as far as Honolulu , Hawaii. There was little competition in the Bay Area suburbs and other areas that

720-537: The Dramatic Chronicle with his brother, Harry . The daily paper was focused on theater gossip, advertising and light news. The revenue from the Dramatic Chronicle allowed the brothers to begin publishing the San Francisco Chronicle in 1869. Charles focused on the content and editing of the paper, while Harry was responsible for the management of the paper on the business side. In 1874, de Young denounced San Francisco Judge Delos Lake, which led to

768-583: The Navy for logistics purposes during the Korean War , reverting to the Flood family after the war ended in 1953. The Navy returned the retail floors to the family, and in 1952 Woolworth's opened a store in the basement and on the first and second floors, on a 40-year lease. The building was renovated in the 1990s at a cost of $ 15 million, and a bust of James L. Flood by his daughter Mary Ellen Flood Stebbins

816-490: 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 reporting, though

864-805: The Teamsters and the Internal Revenue Service . On the afternoon of January 27, 1975, the two-year anniversary of the ceasefire of the Vietnam War, demonstrators staged a takeover of the Consulate of South Vietnam, located above Woolworths. Until 2002, the building housed the consulate of Mexico; in 2003, eight consulates remained, in 2020, two, those of Nicaragua and Chile. In 2024, the Market Street Railway and Circus Bella have their offices there. From 1952 to 1993

912-612: The Hearst Corporation took ownership in 2000 the Chronicle has made periodic changes to its organization and design, but on February 1, 2009, as the newspaper began its 145th year of publication, the Chronicle Sunday edition introduced a redesigned paper featuring a modified logo, new section, and page organization, new features, bolder, colored section-front banners and new headline and text typography. The frequent bold-faced, all-capital-letter headlines typical of

960-801: The Netherlands and France. His maternal grandfather, Benjamin Morange, who served as the French Minister to Spain under Napoleon I , moved to the United States about 1815 and helped found the B'nai Jeshurun Congregation in New York in 1825. In 1859, he began publishing the Holiday Advertiser , a daily publication, while he was finishing his apprenticeship . The interests were sold and in 1865, he began publishing

1008-503: The Woolworth's store at the base of the Flood Building was the largest in the chain; its size was then reduced, occupying only the basement level, and it closed in 1997. More recently, flagship stores for Gap , Urban Outfitters , and Anthropologie have been located in the building's retail space. The Gap store closed in 2020; As of July 2024, Following COVID-19 , Urban Outfitters is the only first-floor retail tenant, and there are

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1056-466: The afternoon newspaper. The two newspapers produced a joint Sunday edition, with the Examiner publishing the news sections and the Sunday magazine, and the Chronicle responsible for the tabloid-sized entertainment section and the book review. From 1965 on the two papers shared a single classified-advertising operation. This arrangement stayed in place until the Hearst Corporation took full control of

1104-495: The de Young family in 2000. It is the only major daily paper covering the city and county of San Francisco. The paper benefited from the growth of San Francisco and had the largest newspaper circulation on the West Coast of the United States by 1880. Like other newspapers, it experienced a rapid fall in circulation in the early 21st century and was ranked 18th nationally by circulation in the first quarter of 2021. In 1994,

1152-647: The focus on the suburban communities that the Chronicle was striving to cultivate. The de Young family controlled the paper, via the Chronicle Publishing Company , until July 27, 2000, when it was sold to Hearst Communications, Inc. , which owned the Examiner . Following the sale, the Hearst Corporation transferred the Examiner to the Fang family, publisher of the San Francisco Independent and AsianWeek , along with

1200-520: The former site of St. Mary's Cathedral, which burned down in 1962). KRON was sold to Young Broadcasting in 2000 and, after years of being San Francisco's NBC affiliate, became an independent station on January 1, 2002, when NBC—tired of Chronicle's repeated refusal to sell KRON to the network and, later, Young's asking price for the station being too high —purchased KNTV in San Jose from Granite Broadcasting Corporation for $ 230 million. Since

1248-407: The interior took two years. By World War II, the building had become medical and dental offices. In 1950, the Flood family accepted a proposal from the F. W. Woolworth Company to replace it with a modern three-story store, which would revert to the family on the expiration of a 50-year lease. Instead, after the tenants had been evicted in preparation for demolition, the building was requisitioned by

1296-483: The largest circulation of any newspaper west of the Mississippi River . The paper's first office was in a building at the corner of Bush and Kearney Streets . The brothers then commissioned a building from Burnham and Root at 690 Market Street at the corner of Third and Kearney Streets to be their new headquarters, in what became known as Newspaper Row . The new building, San Francisco's first skyscraper,

1344-449: The late 1950s and early 1960s left the Examiner and the Chronicle to battle for circulation and readership superiority. The competition between the Chronicle and Examiner took a financial toll on both papers until the summer of 1965, when a merger of sorts created a Joint Operating Agreement under which the Chronicle became the city's sole morning daily while the Examiner changed to afternoon publication (which ultimately led to

1392-422: The late 1960s. It also featured such colorful columnists as Pauline Phillips , who wrote under the name " Dear Abby ", "Count Marco" (Marc Spinelli), Stanton Delaplane , Terence O'Flaherty, Lucius Beebe , Art Hoppe , Charles McCabe , and Herb Caen . The newspaper grew in circulation to become the city's largest, overtaking the rival San Francisco Examiner . The demise of other San Francisco dailies through

1440-474: 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. Charles de Young Charles de Young (January 8, 1846 – April 23, 1880), along with his younger brother M. H. de Young , founded the newspaper The Daily Dramatic Chronicle , which became the San Francisco Chronicle , and

1488-420: The newspaper launched its own namesake website, SFChronicle.com, and began the separation of SFGATE and the Chronicle brands, which today are two separately run entities. The Chronicle was founded by brothers Charles and M. H. de Young in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle , funded by a borrowed $ 20 gold piece. Their brother Gustavus was named with Charles on the masthead. Within 10 years, it had

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1536-563: The newspaper launched the SFGATE website, with a soft launch in March and an official launch on November 3, 1994, including both content from the newspaper and other sources. "The Gate", as it was known at launch, was the first large market newspaper website in the world, co-founded by Allen Weiner and John Coate. It went on to staff up with its own columnists and reporters, and even won a Pulitzer Prize for Mark Fiore's political cartoons. In 2013,

1584-740: The newspaper served, but as Knight-Ridder consolidated the Mercury News in 1975; purchased the Contra Costa Times (now East Bay Times ) in 1995; and as the Denver-based Media News Group made a rapid purchase of the remaining newspapers on the East Bay by 1985, the Chronicle realized it had to step up its suburban coverage. The Chronicle launched five zoned sections to appear in the Friday edition of

1632-488: The newspapers. On November 9, 2009, the Chronicle became the first newspaper in the nation to print on high-quality glossy paper. The high-gloss paper is used for some section fronts and inside pages. The current publisher of the Chronicle is Bill Nagel. Audrey Cooper was named editor-in-chief in January 2015 and was the first woman to hold the position. In June 2020 she left to be the editor-in-chief of WNYC, New York City. In August 2020, Hearst named Emilio Garcia-Ruiz

1680-608: The paper does maintain a Washington, D.C., 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 East Bay Times (formerly Contra Costa Times ) and the Mercury News . Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada received the 2004 George Polk Award for Sports Reporting. Fainaru-Wada and Williams were recognized for their work on uncovering

1728-528: The paper. The sections covered San Francisco and four different suburban areas. They each featured a unique columnist, enterprise pieces, and local news specific to the community. The newspaper added 40 full-time staff positions to work in the suburban bureaus. Despite the push to focus on suburban coverage, the Chronicle was hamstrung by the Sunday edition, which, being produced by the San Francisco-centric "un- Chronicle " Examiner , had none of

1776-464: 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. Despite – 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

1824-490: The production of what he termed "A Bolder, Brighter Chronicle ." The newer look was accompanied by a reduction in the size of the broadsheet. Such moves are similar to those made by other prominent American newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel , which in 2008 unveiled radically new designs even as changing reader demographics and general economic conditions necessitated physical reductions of

1872-488: The publication's editor-in-chief. Ann Killion has written for Sports Illustrated . Carl Nolte is a journalist and columnist. The newspaper's websites are at SFGate.com (free) and SFChronicle.com (premium). Originally The Gate , SFGATE was one of the earliest major market newspaper websites to be launched, on November 3, 1994, at the time of The Newspaper Guild strike ; the union published its own news website, San Francisco Free Press , whose staff joined SFGATE when

1920-486: The six-month period ending in 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,

1968-540: The strike ended. SFChronicle.com launched in 2013 and since 2019 has been run separately from SFGATE, whose staff are independent of the print newspaper. As of 2020 across all platforms the Chronicle has 34 million unique visitors each month, with SFGATE receiving 135.9 million pageviews and 25.1 million unique visitors per month and SFChronicle.com 31.3 million pageviews and 31.3 million unique visitors per month globally. The paper has received

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2016-536: The two meeting in California Street for a duel during the busiest time of day. Judge Lake shot twice at de Young, who returned the shots; neither was hit. He was proud of the notoriety he had obtained, and proud of the personal danger, as a legitimate element of that notoriety. At the time of his death, the San Francisco Chronicle was worth $ 250,000 (equivalent to $ 7,893,000 in 2023). In 1879, Isaac Smith Kalloch ran for mayor of San Francisco. It

2064-531: The wounds and with the sympathy of voters was elected the 18th Mayor of San Francisco. He served from 1879 until 1881. On April 23, 1880, Kalloch's son, Isaac Milton Kalloch, entered the Chronicle building and shot and killed Charles de Young. In 1884, de Young's brother, Harry, commissioned a bronze statue of Charles, erected at the Odd Fellows Cemetery in San Francisco which cost in excess of $ 10,000 (equivalent to $ 339,000 in 2023). The statue

2112-473: Was completed in 1889. It was damaged in the 1906 earthquake, but it was rebuilt under the direction of William Polk, Burnham's associate in San Francisco. That building, known as the "Old Chronicle Building" or the "DeYoung Building", still stands and was restored in 2007. It is a historic landmark and is the location of the Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences . In 1924, the Chronicle commissioned

2160-467: Was destroyed by fire in 1898. It was later purchased by James L. Flood , who constructed the building as a tribute to his father, James Clair Flood , the Comstock Lode millionaire). Designed by Albert Pissis , it opened in 1904 as San Francisco's largest building. In 1906, it was one of the few major buildings to survive the San Francisco earthquake and the fire that followed; full restoration of

2208-445: Was installed in the lobby. The Southern Pacific Railroad company had its headquarters in the Flood Building from 1907 until 1917 when it moved to its own building, now at One Market Plaza . The Pinkerton Detective Agency had an office on the third floor, where it employed the novelist Dashiell Hammett as an operative; Hammett located his fictional Continental Detective Agency in the building. Other office tenants have included

2256-621: Was its editor-in-chief. He was murdered by Isaac M. Kalloch, son of Isaac S. Kalloch , the Mayor of San Francisco , in revenge for a feud Charles had with the mayor. Charles de Young was born on January 8, 1846 in Natchitoches, Louisiana . He was the son of Cornelia "Amelia" ( née Morange; 1809–1881) and Miechel de Young (died 1854), who married in 1837, and the brother of Michael Henry "Harry" de Young and Virginia de Young (died 1875). His family, who were Jewish , had immigrated from

2304-450: Was not long before he came under attack from the San Francisco Chronicle' s editor-in-chief, Charles de Young, who was backing another candidate. de Young, with the hopes of taking Kalloch out of the mayoral race, accused the minister of having an affair. Kalloch responded by accusing Charles' mother, Amelia, of running a brothel. In response, Charles de Young ambushed Kalloch in the streets of San Francisco and shot him twice. Kalloch survived

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