Media in the San Francisco Bay Area
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.
San Francisco Independent
Under new ownership, the Independent quickly took a more aggressive approach to growth and that summer launched a challenge to the largest and oldest community paper, the San Francisco Progress, by submitting a bid to publish the public notices for the city and becoming the Official Newspaper of San Francisco. Although the Independent was ultimately not successful in securing that advertising contract, the next year the scrappy newspaper was successful in pulling the bulk of the real estate community’s advertising away from the Progress and into a new publication printed by the Independent. Then, on December 15, 1988 the San Francisco Progress shut its doors, ceased publication and filed for bankruptcy. In six days, on December 21, 1988, the Independent converted from a tabloid size to the traditional broadsheet newspaper size and increased circulation from 80,000 to 180,000.