Snob's Return

One day in 1950, after 14 years on the San Francisco Chronicle, Columnist Herb Caen strolled over to Hearst's Examiner, changed the name of his column (from "It's News to Me" to "Baghdad-by-the-Bay"), and nearly doubled his salary (to $30,000). Last week Columnist Caen announced gleefully that he was going back to his old paper--at his new price. The Chronicle's normally tight management not only agreed to match Caen's Hearst paycheck, now up to $38,000, but promised him a raise next year as well. Starting date: Jan. 15, when his present contract expires.

By hymning San Francisco's charms in suitably breezy prose, Sacramento-born Herb Caen (rhymes with reign) has long enjoyed the title "Mr. San Francisco," and one of the most faithful followings of any local columnist in the U.S. (TIME, July 1). On his three-block walk in 1950, Caen took with him 10,000 to 15,000 readers. The upward-struggling Chronicle (circ. 190,045), which has run six columnists in Caen's space without filling the gap, hopes that Herb's homecoming will draw an extra 30,000 circulation and regain some of the advertising that followed him to the Examiner (circ. 250,132).

Like many of his readers who felt that his nimble style was showing signs of middle-aged spread at Hearst's board, Columnist Caen was delighted at the prospect of returning to the free-and-easy atmosphere of his old paper. Grinned he: "I guess I'm a Chronicle snob."

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