Don’t be surprised if Hearst kills its seventh daily newspaper in San Francisco
By Dick Meister
Dick Meister is a former labor reporter for the Chronicle and has covered labor and politics for more than 50 years. He explains in this piece how he covered the 1968 Chronicle/Examiner strike in the Guardian under the byline “by our correspondent.” Four of his Guardian pieces are run below as links. His big scoop: the obscure 23-page document, filed secretly in Reno, Nevada, that laid out how the Chronicle family and Hearst set up the San Francisco Printing Company/JOA on a 50-50 basis. Our front page head: “Secret Merger Deal–Now, proof that the booming Chronicle went into equal partnership with the ailing Examiner in the touchy 1965 deal.” Our illustration was a dagger impaled in the heart of a Chronicle front page. B3
Don’t be surprised if the Hearst Corporation closes the Chronicle, despite its importance to the community and the men and women who produce it. Hearst, after all, has already killed six other San Francisco newspapers.
It began in 1913, when William Randolph Hearst, who had been operating the then-morning Examiner, bought the San Francisco Call and merged it into Hearst’s Evening Post. Sixteen years later, he bought the San Francisco Bulletin and merged it with the Call to create the afternoon Call-Bulletin.