San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle's front page, April 22, 1906
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)Hearst Communications
PublisherBill Nagel
FoundedJanuary 16, 1865 (1865-01-16)
Headquarters901 Mission Street
San Francisco, California
94103
Circulation246,592 Sunday circulation

226,860 avg. Mon-Fri circulation

Source: Alliance for Audited Media, 6 mos. ended September 30, 2022
ISSN1932-8672
OCLC number8812614
Websitesfchronicle.com
sfgate.com (until 2017)

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.[1] The paper is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which bought it from 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.[2]

In 1994, the newspaper launched the SFGATE website, with a soft launch in March and official launch 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.[3]

In 2013, 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.

  1. ^ Nolte, Carl (June 16, 1999). "134 Years of the Chronicle". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved September 21, 2006.
  2. ^ Turvill, William (August 25, 2021). "Top 25 US newspapers by circulation: America's largest titles have lost 20% of print sales since Covid-19 hit". Press Gazette.
  3. ^ Pulitzer Prize for Mark Fiore's political cartoons