Media in San Francisco

The media in San Francisco not only refers to media produced and covered within the City and County of San Francisco, but also the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area. Generally speaking, San Francisco (along with the cities of Oakland, San Jose, and neighboring cities) is a technological powerhouse, with many Internet websites based in the City and throughout the region, including social networking giant Facebook and the largest search engine site Google. The region also hosts to one of the oldest radio stations in the United States still in existence, KCBS (AM) (740 kHz), founded by engineer Charles Herrold in 1909.

San Francisco media tends to be liberal in nature, as well as diverse, thanks to a number of factors, including continuous growth of immigrants moving to the region, the culture of liberalism that persisted for decades, and an affluent population that provides a niche for various media forms.

Print

The first newspaper published by Americans in California was The Californian, printed in Monterey in 1846 announcing the Mexican American War, written half in English and half Spanish. The press was moved to San Francisco and printing started up again on May 22, 1847 in competition with the weekly California Star, beginning that January. The first newspaper published solely in English in San Francisco was The Star published by Mormon pioneer Sam Brannan before San Francisco was renamed from Yerba Buena in 1847. Both efforts suspended publication in the face of the California Gold Rush. By August, The Californian had resumed publication, but by November 1848, both papers were bought and merged, then renamed the Alta California.

The press that once printed The Californian was moved to the Sacramento area to be used on the Placer Times. The press was again moved and began publishing the Motherlode's first paper, the Sonora Herald, then taken to Columbia to print the Columbia Star. Within a few years of the discovery of gold, mother lode towns all had multiple competing journals. Before 1860, California had 57 newspapers and periodicals serving an average readership of 290,000.

James King of William began publishing the Daily Evening Bulletin in San Francisco in October, 1855 and built it into the highest circulation paper in the city. He criticized a city supervisor named James P. Casey, who, on the afternoon of the story about him, ran in the paper, shot and mortally wounded King. Casey was lynched by the early vigilante committee. The Morning Call was established and began publishing in December 1856, and later merged with the Bulletin to become the long-running Call-Bulletin. The San Francisco Chronicle debuted in June, 1865 as the Dramatic Chronicle, founded by Charles and M.H. de Young aged 19 and 17.

In 1887, young William Randolph Hearst took over his father's Daily Examiner, which became the flagship of his national chain.

Fremont Older became editor of the San Francisco Bulletin in 1895 and took up the struggle against the powerful Southern Pacific Railroad and along with fellow Californian Lincoln Steffens, became a well-known muckraker and the first objective observer to accuse District Attorney Charles Fickert of the framing of labor radical Thomas Mooney.

The oldest African-American newspaper, still active in the 1930s, was the California Eagle. It appeared first in Los Angeles in 1879. The first French journals, the Californien and the Gazette Republicane both began in 1850, and were followed by the Courrier du Pacifique in 1852. Both the first German and first Italian papers, the California Demokrat (1852) and the Voce del Popolo (1859) were founded in San Francisco and had long runs. Chinese in California have published many newspapers, the first being the Gold Hills News in 1854.

Famous journalists, writers, cartoonists and publishers have passed through San Francisco's media world, including:

Ambrose Bierce James King of William Henry George William Randolph Hearst Mark Twain Bret Harte Charles Warren Stoddard Prentice Mulford Joaquin Miller Will Irwin

Wallace Irwin Gelett Burgess Gertrude Atherton Jack London Fremont Older Rube Goldberg Herbert Asbury Winifred Bonfils John Bruce William Martin Camp

Art Hoppe John Wasserman Harry Jupiter Charles McCabe Harold Gilliam Phil Elwood Randy Shilts Herb Caen Warren Hinkle Bruce Brugmann

By the early decades of the 20th century, San Francisco supported four major dailies and numerous influential weeklies. The dailies were the San Francisco Call (later Call-Bulletin), the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Scripps-Howard, the Daily News. The weeklies included the Wasp, the ARGONAUT, the Labor Clarion, the Coast Seamen's Journal, Emanu-el, Liberator and the News Letter.

Today, several newspapers, covering community, regional, national, and international news, and community-specific papers, catering to niche markets and individual neighborhoods, are in circulation in the San Francisco Bay Area, including:

• San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco) - daily broadsheet
• The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco) - daily tabloid
• Oakland Tribune (Oakland) - daily broadsheet
• Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek) - daily broadsheet
• San Jose Mercury News (San Jose) - daily broadsheet
• Marin Independent Journal (Novato) - daily broadsheet
• The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa) - daily broadsheet
• San Francisco Bay Guardian (San Francisco) - weekly alternative
• SF Weekly (San Francisco) - weekly alternative
• Several other community-based papers, published on a daily or weekly basis

Aside from the major English broadsheets, the Bay Area also publishes newspapers catering to the large immigrant community living in the region, including:

• Sing Tao Daily (Brisbane) - Chinese
• Asian Week (San Francisco) - Pan-Asian
• World Journal (San Francisco) - Chinese
• Oakland Post (Oakland) - African American
• Several other Asian and Hispanic newspapers

Several college newspapers also exist as well in the Bay Area, including:

• The Daily Californian (UC Berkeley)
• Synapse (UC San Francisco)
• Golden Gate [X]press (San Francisco State University)
• Pioneer (CSU Hayward)
• Spartan Daily (San Jose State University)
• San Francisco Foghorn (University of San Francisco)

Magazines published in the San Francisco Bay Area include:

• San Francisco magazine
• 7x7
• Mother Jones (magazine)
• The Believer (magazine)
• McSweeney's magazine and publishing house

References: ^[1], ^[2]

Television

The San Francisco Bay Area is currently the sixth-largest television market in the United States, with all of the major U.S. television networks having affiliates serving the region, and it is host to various local, national, and international programming. With a large, diverse population spread throughout the region, the Bay Area provides channels specific to their needs, including Asian and Hispanic television stations, as well as foreign programming on digital sub-channels.

When television channels broadcast their identities, they would usually identify their channel in this order (it can be altered depending on the network's city of license, but always include San Francisco in the list): (channel/station ID), San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose. This also happens when radio stations (listed below) identify themselves on the top of each hour.

Currently, television stations that primarily serve the San Francisco Bay Area include: (Note: list does not include the stations' digital sub-channels or low-powered television channels)

Station	Channel	Network Affiliation	City of License	Status
KTVU†	2	Fox	Oakland	Owned by Cox Communications
KRON	4	MyNetworkTV	San Francisco	Owned by New Young Broadcasting
KPIX†	5	CBS	San Francisco	Owned and operated by network
KGO	7	ABC	San Francisco	Owned and operated by network
KQED	9	PBS	San Francisco	Public broadcasting
KNTV†	11	NBC	San Jose	Owned and operated by network
KDTV†	14	Univision	San Francisco	Owned and operated by network
KOFY	20	Independent	San Francisco	Owned by Granite Broadcasting
KRCB	22	PBS	Cotati	Public broadcasting
KTSF	26	Independent	San Francisco	Ethnic (Asian) broadcasting
KMTP	32	Independent	Palo Alto	Ethnic broadcasting
KICU†	36	Independent	San Jose	Owned by Cox Communications
KCNS	38	Independent	San Francisco	Ethnic (Asian) broadcasting
KTNC	42	Estrella TV	Concord	Ethnic (Hispanic) broadcasting
KBCW†	44	The CW	San Francisco	Owned and operated by CBS
KSTS†	48	Telemundo	San Jose	Owned and operated by NBC
KEMO-TV	50	Independent	Santa Rosa	Owned by High Plains Broadcasting
KQEH	54	PBS	San Jose	Public broadcasting
KCSM	60	PBS	San Mateo	Public broadcasting
KKPX	65	ION	San Jose	Owned and operated affiliate of network
KFSF†	66	Telefutura	Vallejo	Owned and operated by Univision
KTLN	68	TLN	San Rafael	Christian broadcasting

Note: † - channel involved in a duopoly with another channel, owned by the same company or network.

In addition to local television channels, several television networks have regional news bureaus in the San Francisco Bay Area, including BBC, CNN, ESPN, MSNBC, and PBS. The Bay Area will also have its own news channel as well, NBC California Nonstop, which will be broadcast along with sister NBC O&O stations, KNBC-TV and KNSD-TV, on KNTV's secondary digital subchannel.

Radio

Online

Besides websites that are in addition to print publications, a large body of publications that only exist online have come into existence in recent years. They include:

• The Bay Citizen
• Bernalwood
• Beyond Chron
• The Bold Italic
• Burrito Justice
• Curbed SF
• Grubstreet SF
• Haighteration
• Mission Local
• Mission Mission
• Muni Diaries
• SF Public Press
• SF Citizen
• SFist
• Streetsblog SF
• The Tender
• SanFranPreps.com

See also

• Center for Media Justice

References

1. ^ San Francisco Newspapers - Newspaper Guide
2. ^ California Newspapers - Newspaper Guide