In Dubious Battle

For San Franciscans, modern journalistic history began in 1887 when the late William Randolph Hearst, then 23, received the morning Examiner as a gift from his wealthy father. Almost overnight Hearst turned his wan and unimpressive present into the gaudy forerunner of a 26-paper chain,* and within four years he had sent it soaring ahead of the rival Chronicle on the way to a supremacy reflected in the proud masthead boast: "The monarch of the dailies." Last week, after nearly seven decades as Northern California's biggest and most influential newspaper, the Examiner was deep in a fight to see who would be king of the mountain. Once again its opponent was the Chronicle --though the heavy loser in time might prove to be San Francisco's newspaper-reading public.

Where the Examiner on Old Man Hearst's death in 1951 had a 70,000 circulation lead, the latest official figures now give it only 559 more subscribers than the Chronicle (circ. 281,240). In advertising, the Examiner still leads, but the lead is dwindling: in the last four years the Chronicle has increased its yearly ad linage by 6,000,000 lines, while the Examiner has added only 2,500,000.

All That Jazz. One of the Examiner's difficulties is a problem that rarely bothered William Randolph Hearst: journalistic responsibility and respectability. In its rip-roaring youth, the Examiner served as a proving ground for Hearst's journalistic shock tactics; it was one of the first U.S. papers to rush reporters to big out-of-town stories by chartered train. But as Hearst aged, the Examiner cooled into the journalistic pillar of his empire--a sober and respected daily that fed its subscribers nourishing doses of foreign, national and local news, frequently played without regard to Hearst prejudices.

In the Examiner's shadow, the Chronicle moseyed along as an earnest but unexciting paper so out-of-touch with local currents that it once sent its science editor to Outer Mongolia for a story about a "dawn redwood." But in 1952 Charles de Young Thieriot, a descendant of the paper's founders and a man convinced that "international news is not what people want to read at breakfast," took control of the Chronicle. As his right-hand man he picked Scott Newhall, lively scion of another leading Bay family. Dipping into Hearst's own bag of tricks, Newhall and Thieriot began converting the Chronicle into a blend of sex, sensation and spice.

One of Newhall's most telling moves was to overload the Chronicle--which has only 41 cityside reporters--with 40 columnists, writing about everything from jazz (Ralph Gleason) to how to shuck out of a brassiere (Count Marco). News often gave way to such oddball features as a lavishly illustrated Page One Halloween story on five nightgowned girls terrified by a "haunted" apartment. In a further effort to woo subscribers, the Chronicle offered a two-month subscription for the price of one, and gave away a scale-model San Francisco cable car to any new four-month subscriber with children.

Bidding for Herb. At first, Examiner editors were monarchically inclined to look down their noses at such gimmickry. But as the Chronicle gained circulation, the Hearst chain decided to fight back. To match the Chronicle's feature emphasis, the Examiner hired its first "entertainment editor." It lured away the Chronicle's circulation manager, and has been trying to recapture at almost any price San Francisco's most popular local columnist, Herb Caen, who has switched from the Chronicle to the Examiner and back to the Chronicle, taking with him an estimated 20,000 readers.

Last month, increasingly desperate in the face of the Chronicle's continued surge, Hearst brass imported as the Examiner's editor one of their top troubleshooters, Chicago-born Lee Ettelson, 62. A tough but cautious operator, Ettelson faces a basic decision. Already the Chronicle-Examiner fight has given Northern California gaudier newspapers. The only question now is whether the pursuit of serious news in San Francisco is to be a casualty of the campaign.

*Now down to 13.

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