San Francisco Chronicle

The San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout the state from the Sacramento area and Emerald Triangle south to Santa Barbara County. It was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The paper is currently owned by the Hearst Corporation, which bought it from the de Young family in 2000.

The paper benefited from the growth of San Francisco and was the largest circulation newspaper on the West Coast of the United States by 1880. Like many newspapers, it has experienced a rapid fall in circulation in the early 21st century, and was ranked 24th by circulation nationally for the six months to March 2010. The newspaper publishes two web sites: SFGate, which has a mixture of online news and web features, and sfchronicle.com which more closely reflects the type of articles that typically appear in print.

History