January 23, 2008
Phil Bronstein Named Editor-at-Large of Hearst Newspapers Division, SF Chronicle; New Editor TBA
It was announced today that SF Chronicle's editor, Phil Bronstein, will be "shifting his role from running day-to-day operations in the newsroom to taking on broader strategic responsibilities at the paper and for its owner, Hearst Corporation." Whoa.
What's more, you will get to read more of that Bronstein voice:
In addition, Bronstein will write for The Chronicle and sfgate.com. "I got into this profession because of my great love for words and how they can be used to move people," he said. "Hearst is a huge company with amazing creative resources and I'm really looking forward to diving into the possibilities that presents."
Although Phil will still hold the title of executive vice president of The Chronicle, he will "assume the title editor-at-large, both for the paper and for the newspapers division of Hearst." A new editor, it seems, will be announced shortly. Intriguing. More to come, folks. More to come.
He rids himself of the Stone, now this promotion. Way to go, Philip.
For the press release in its entirety, you might as well jump.
Image credit: SF Weekly
PHIL BRONSTEIN NAMED EDITOR-AT-LARGE OF HEARST NEWSPAPERS DIVISION AND THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE NEW YORK,January 23, 2008--Hearst Newspapers announced today that San Francisco Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein will be shifting his role from running day-to-day operations in the newsroom to taking on broader strategic responsibilities at the paper and for its owner, Hearst Corporation. Bronstein will remain executive vice president of The Chronicle and will assume the title editor-at-large, both for the paper and for the newspapers division of Hearst. A new editor will be announced shortly.
Commenting on the announcement, George B. Irish, president, Hearst Newspapers, said, "I asked Phil to consider having a larger role at Hearst, in addition to strategic responsibilities at the San Francisco Chronicle. I am delighted that he has agreed."
Bronstein will continue to represent The Chronicle in the community as a principal public face of the paper. Working with all departments, he will help shape the role of the paper and its Web site, sfgate.com, in San Francisco and the Bay Area. In addition, Bronstein will work with
the newspapers division to oversee investigative projects that may involve multiple properties using resources throughout Hearst. He will also seek to expand successful strategies he initiated at The Chronicle to other Hearst papers, and will work with the office of Hearst's General Counsel on First Amendment issues, including a federal shield law for reporters. He will also work directly with top digital media executives at Hearst Newspapers to identify ideas and content that can be applied across the company.In addition, Bronstein will write for The Chronicle and sfgate.com. "I got into this profession because of my great love for words and how they can be used to move people," he said. "Hearst is a huge company with amazing creative resources and I'm really looking forward to diving into the possibilities that presents."
Regarding his newsroom staff, Bronstein said, "I am enormously proud of what we've accomplished together here. We have saved people's lives, helped countless others have better lives and held public figures and institutions accountable to those they are supposed to serve. And we have done these things consistently and forcefully.
"In the last few years, we have become a multimedia newsroom; we have taken more risks, engaged our readers more fully, become a more dynamically local paper and introduced popular and vital innovations like ChronicleWatch and Journalism of Action. We have gotten more recognition from our peers and our profession than at any time in the paper's history and we, virtually alone among media outlets and companies in recent times, stood firm when federal prosecutors sought to have us reveal our sources [during the BALCO steroids case]. That last battle was truly an epic one.
"We've instituted many changes here, particularly over the last three years. We are on the right track and that causes me to feel that I am making this move at a good time for The Chronicle and for me." Bronstein thanked his staff for "indulging me, however reluctantly at times, for working so hard, for being so dedicated and for making me look good because of your great talents, far more than I deserved."
Chronicle Publisher Frank J. Vega commented: "Some of Phil's most innovative ideas, including his introduction of Journalism of Action to our newsroom, show just how far ahead of the curve he is."
Bronstein added: "After 17 years of editing a paper and all the daily responsibilities it entails, it was time for me to move to some of the larger strategic interests I have never had time to pursue. Those 17 years were filled with innumerable crises and great stories, including floods, earthquakes and fires ? we've lived through times and tumult of almost biblical proportion. But the profession is changing dramatically and there's so much we ought to be doing now to take advantage of those changes."
Bronstein first became editor of the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner in 1991. He then took over as Chronicle editor when the two newsrooms merged in 2000. He had been a reporter at The Examiner since 1980, and was an award-winning investigative reporter and foreign correspondent.
Hearst Corporation (www.hearst.com) is one of the nation's largest diversified media companies. Its major interests include ownership of 12 daily and 31 weekly newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle and Albany Times Union; as well as interests in an additional 47 daily and 38 non-daily newspapers owned by MediaNews Group which include the Denver Post and Salt Lake Tribune; nearly 200 magazines around the world, including Cosmopolitan and O, The Oprah Magazine; 29 television stations through Hearst-Argyle Television (NYSE:HTV) which reach a combined 18% of U.S. viewers; ownership in leading cable networks, including Lifetime, A&E, The History Channel and ESPN; as well as business publishing, including a joint venture interest in Fitch Ratings; Internet businesses, television production, newspaper features distribution and real estate.
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god i wish the chronicle didn't suck so much. we'd have a better city if we had a decent daily newspaper. we really would.
Bring back Warren Hinckle!
Ah, warsux, I was once like you.
Eve, what made you change your mind? The Chronicle certainly hasn't improved lately...
As biased as the Chron is, it could be much, much, much worse.
Real cities have real newspapers. Pity SF isn't one of them. Maybe now that Bronstein will be taking on broader strategic responsibilities, he'll force the Comical to stop acting like a blog, shut down the comments section on SF Gate, fire Cecilia M. Vega, and strongly encourage the Comical staff to act like journalists and actually start writing a newspaper. I'm not holding my breath...
TAYM, I don't think having the paper turn into a pillar of salt will help them.
Brock, I don't see how it could hurt...
TAYM, if you could switch the Chron with any other daily newspaper in America, which one would you chose?
The obvious choices are the New York Times or the LA Times. While those are much larger cities, the locals here like to think we're somehow on the same level. Newspapers from similar sized cities that I consider of higher quality than the Comical would include the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Washington Post, The Oregonian, and the Boston Globe. Even the San Jose Mercury is better than the Comical. It's a real tragedy.
Jeez... I'd even take the Examiner over the Chron. Though SFGate has a much better website than Examiner.com.
And not one Komodo dragon joke. I'm disappointed.
often times the LA Times has better reporting about SF issues than our papers do...it's because they're not trying to placate anyone here in our little less than a million person college town.
The Chronicle is definitely not a great newspaper but I think they do a pretty good job on the back end at least: Sports and Datebook.
Great. Unfortunately, Sports and Datebook isn't news. Greg nails it on the head. The Comical is so heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, it's little more than a propaganda sheet for the residents of Specific Whites. It's one of the bigger reasons SF is such a mess.
that there is an overstatement.
I beg to differ, Brock. A newspaper by its very nature is obligated to keep the population it serves adequately informed. How are people expected to make reasonable choices about anything when they don't even have access to adequate information? The Chronicle fails abysmally at this simple task. I think back to our recent mayoral election and how seriously skewed the Chronicle's coverage of the whole mess happened to be. Anyone running for mayor who wasn't named Gavin Newsom, was either ignored by the newspaper's political writers, or worse, dismissed out of hand. This was the case regardless of whether the candidate was serious in intent or not. Sorry. That's not news coverage. At best, it's editorializing under guise of journalism, at worse propaganda for the status quo.
Overstatement? Exaggeration? Hyperbole?
The Comical is so heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, it's little more than a propaganda sheet for the residents of Specific Whites.
Yep, that pretty much fits.
Setting aside for a second your reductive view of the recent Mayoral race, let's grant (for argument's sake) Grrg's assertion that SF is a million person college town. The challenge would then be to create a newspaper for ... a million person college town.
That's why, TAYM, I asked you which newspaper you would chose over the Chron.
The Oregonian and the Minneapolis Star are not players in the national journalism scene. So, no dice. The political bias of the Washington Post makes The Chronicle look like Pravda. And of course, the NYT and LAT are better. The quality and relevance of a newspaper will always be relative to size and significance of the region it covers. No one seriously compares the Chronicle to the NYT any more than they would seriously compare Union Square to Times Square.
I'll grant you then, that the San Ho Merc, and Boston Globe are better papers, operating in similar markets. That's two. A pretty good batting average.
if you're talking about journalistic standards alone, well, I'm pretty pissed about the pro-Hillary coverage they're printing over there at 5th and Market. But you know who's really pro-Clinton? The San Jose Mercury.
You say potayto, I say potahdo.
"The Oregonian and the Minneapolis Star are not players in the national journalism scene. So, no dice."
Assuming what you say about those two newspapers may be true, I'm forced to ask just why you think the Chronicle is a "player in the national journalism scene"? I don't get it. Furthermore, considering the fact that both the Portland and Twin Cities metropolitan areas have populations well over two million and three million people, respectively, the comparison of their newspapers to our local rag is apt.
As far as my so-called reductive view of the recent mayoral race, pffffft. Please.
Comparison is entirely apt. Never said wasn't. I'm saying within that comparison, the Oregonian and MS fail.
I think the Chron is a larger player because it simply is. Use any objective standard outside the ivory-tower of a journalism school:
How many times does the AP pick up a story?
What's the quality of its international reportage?
Does it maintain a DC bureau?
How many Pulitzers have they racked up?
What kind of presence does it have in the blogopshere, and more broadly, the internet?
And most damningly, what's the size of its daily/weekly circulation?
You know, the usual. I don't see how your two choices win.
(And did Quintin Mecke ever, ever poll higher than 7%? Did anyone?)
Generic, these are really good criteria. let's see how the three newspapers in question stack up to some of them.
DC Bureau?
-SF Chronicle: Yes
-Oregonian: Yes
-Minneapolis Star Tribune (Strib): You betcha'
Circulation -
-SF Chronicle: Daily 386,564/Sunday 438,006
-Oregonian: Daily 319,625/Sunday 375,913
-Strib: Daily 345,252/Sunday 574,406 (!!!)
Total Pulitzer Prizes -
-SF Chronicle: 6
-The Oregonian: 6
-Strib: 5
Hrmmm. To be honest, you had me doubting there for a second, Generic. Looks like the Comical is right on par with both the Oregonian and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Interesting, considering the fact that as individual cities, both Portland and Minneapolis are about half the size of SF. World class, indeed.
As regards Quintin Mecke - did the Chronicle even cover Mecke? Or, did it simply just lump him in with Chicken John and the naked, homeless taxi cab guy? The Chronicle picked Gavin Newsom for mayor and dismissed, derided, or flat out ignored the other candidates. Without equal press coverage, no one else had a chance.
Having taken the bait, you''ll now have to tell me how it tastes.
Because if you concede that this is an acceptable way to evaluate the importance of a newspaper, you'll have to allow that, by these same standards, while the Chron is not substantially better, it's certainly not substantially worse.
But even that doesn't hold up, because from the absences I can infer you've cherry-picked your three criterion, and yep ...
International reportage?
-MS: None.
-Oregonian: None.
-Chron: Hella.
AP pick-ups? Wouldn't know where to find AP stats, but I can open do a quick NYT archive search.
-MST: 334
-Oregonian: 416
-Chron: 1,834
Web Presence? (Unique hits)
-Oregonian: Less than a million
-MST: 2.5 million
-Chron: 5.2 milliion
And it doesn't take much to then draw conclusions as to why those last numbers have far more valence than stats re: paper circulation, these days.
By my scoring that's Chron-3, MST- 1, Oregonian-0, with the others, at best, a draw. And now after having wiki'd the respective rags, I can see other factors as well, such as the stiffness of their competitors. The Minnesota Star Tribune's competitor is ... wait for it ... the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The Oregonian doesn't even have a rival to speak of. Whereas the Chron is hotly contested by both the Oakland Trib and the hefty SJ Merc (not to mention the Examiner and Contra Costa Times) in the nation's 4th largest media market. The Chron = big fish, big pond. Your picks ... medium fishes, medium ponds.
So, you know, we can go round and round. Potayto, potahdo.
Re: Mecke, as I said, never broke a pitiful 7%. Ever. So you're incorrectly assigning causality. Did Mecke not break single digits because the Chron gave him sparse coverage? Or was there sparse coverage because he never broke single digits? The latter. At some point the public has to take your candidacy seriously, and SF never did. Mecke never demonstrated any city-wide constituency, so there's no story to cover. Just as there wasn't with Grasshopper or Chicken John. A coronation happened, sure, but not in the editorial room.
Bait, Generic? The only trap here is in your strange little mind. I thought the criteria you offered up were good for determining newspaper quality. I chose the three easiest to qualify. I can see why you'd call that cherry picking, but a quick glance at your attempt to evaluate the others proves how wrong you are. I mean, you can't be serious in suggesting that the Chronicle has "hella" international news reporting and the other two have none. A quick glance at today's Comical shows a total of three pages of world news. Ooooh! How in depth! Your attempt at gaging the other categories is just as flimsy. Unique web hits? Number of references in the New York Times archives? Come off it. Admit you're one of those SF chauvinists who can't deal with any kind of criticism being directed at San Francisco. It really chaps your hide that SF is basically on the same level as Minneapolis, as opposed to London or Paris or whatever real city you think this pretentious provincial gated community we live in ought to be compared to. Ptsch!
RE: Mecke. You're putting the cart before the horse, son. No one can vote for the man when they've never even heard of him. The Chronicle totally contributed to that by basically blacking out any kind of news on candidates who weren't Gavin Newsom or a total joke, like Chicken John.
New Chron editor announced: Ward E. Bushee.
I miss The Weekly World News and "Bat Boy"