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It was sometimes difficult to tell on which side of that line the paper's leadership fell. When I joined the Examiner it was being run by Larry Kramer, a genial executive editor who seemed more interested in entrepreneurism than editing (and who is now CEO of CBS Marketwatch), and managing editor Frank McCulloch, a legendary journalist who lent the paper some class and experience. Within a few years both were gone, replaced by Phil Bronstein, the paper's swashbuckling former Philippines correspondent, and Sharon Rosenhause -- a perpetually scowling managing editor who, as far as I could tell, never left her office and, in the years we worked for the same paper, never chose to say hello.

Bronstein had perhaps watched too many old movies about the news business, and seemed to think that hurling curses at his subordinates was an effective management technique. Once, after I'd dared post a message on the staff computer bulletin board arguing that the critiques of our work he was distributing from our colleagues ought to be signed, he called me into his office, propped one of his cowboy boots on his chair and hollered, "Prima donna motherfucker!" I kind of liked the epithet, but I'll never forget the look of outrage on his face: His newsroom, he was making clear, was a place for following orders, not exchanging ideas.

That spirit was precisely at odds with the kind of freewheeling, talent-oriented journalism Will Hearst had embraced, and the Examiner never really resolved the tension between its publisher's renaissance ideals and its editor's bully-boy machismo. Paralysis ensued. It didn't help that, no matter how many unorthodox moves Will made, he couldn't budge the Examiner's circulation: Hearst Corporation officials had essentially doomed the paper when they accepted the afternoon slot back in the '60s.

Also Today No gays or abortions allowed in my papers! Right-wing Catholic David Weyrich prints all the news that fits his agenda. By Stephen Lemons

That left the Examiner a newspaper on the artificial life support of a law, the Newspaper Preservation Act (which shaped the joint operating agreement). As far as we in the newsroom could tell, this seemed to suit the parent corporation just fine, as long as it continued to rake in its share of the monopoly's take. After the brief expansionary period in the '80s, the Examiner returned to its parsimonious ways; and the recession of the early '90s brought staff cuts that eliminated any pretense of competing with the morning paper in any category other than ballsiness.

The daily Ex had become a disturbingly thin product even before the strike of November 1994. But that two-week affair killed off the last vestiges of idealism at the paper. Will Hearst had always talked of his newspaper as one big family -- after all, for him, that's exactly what it was -- and he appeared honestly hurt that his employees viewed the relationship differently.

In the strike's aftermath, while the Chronicle management reached out to its staff in a conciliatory spirit, the Examiner's editors mostly greeted their returning workers with glares. Mean-spiritedness -- along with narrow corporate bean-counting -- had triumphed, and within a few weeks Will Hearst had left the paper for Silicon Valley's premier venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins.

A lot of people thought the Examiner would soon fold, but there was no incentive for the Hearst Corporation to shut the paper down as long as the joint agreement remained in place. Still, as the presses kept rolling, day after day, most of the Ex's remaining talent fled -- some cherry-picked by the morning paper, more lighting out for the new territories on the Internet. On the day I turned in my resignation in 1995, the paper's editors couldn't even be bothered to give me an exit interview.

The Examiner's failure, however heartbreaking to the people who once worked there, has had one salutary effect on the world of journalism: It has seeded the fledgling world of Internet "content" with newsroom veterans determined to bring their values into the new medium.

Salon, certainly, wouldn't be here today if it weren't for the Examiner. Its founding editorial team, Examiner exiles all, was eager to leave behind the paper's stifling authoritarianism and its ambivalence toward its own staffers' talent. But we also hoped to salvage the best of the paper's tradition -- its willingness to take risks and mix up intelligent coverage with tabloid vivacity.

Today, optimistic pundits are suggesting that the new, Hearst-operated Chronicle, drawing from the combined staffs of the old Chronicle and Examiner, might finally give the Bay Area the "world-class newspaper" it has so long been promised and so long lacked. But where in the Hearst Corporation's recent history is there any sign that this is one of its goals -- or that it might have the skills to achieve such a goal, once set? This is a media company that has gradually run its newspapers into the ground, allowing both the Examiner and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner to spiral downward into mediocrity and oblivion. If it understands how to create a "world-class newspaper," it has kept that ability well hidden to date.

Periodically during my years there, the Examiner brass would become transfixed by some trendy innovation in newsroom practices that was supposed to solve all the paper's problems in one managerial swoop. Each time, I remember that Frank McCulloch would lean back and (I hope my imperfect memory is quoting him, of all people, accurately) declare, "There's only four ways you can improve a newspaper: You can report stories better, write them better, edit them better and illustrate them better."

Will San Francisco finally get the newspaper it deserves? That will depend on whether its new newspaper proprietors -- the new owners of the Chronicle or the new owners of "the Monarch" -- show any understanding of McCulloch's maxim.
salon.com | March 21, 2000

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