San Francisco Chronicle
The "Chronicle" was founded by brothers Charles and M. H. de Young in 1865 as "The Daily Dramatic Chronicle", and inside of 10 years, it had the largest circulation of any newspaper west of the Mississippi River. The paper's first office was in a building at the corner of Bush and Kearney Streets. The brothers then commissioned a building from Burnham and Root at 690 Market Street at the corner of Third and Kearney Streets to be their new headquarters, in what became known as Newspaper Row. The new building, San Francisco's first skyscraper, was completed in 1889. It was damaged in the 1906 earthquake, but it was rebuilt under the direction of William Polk, Burnham's associate in San Francisco. That building, known as the "Old Chronicle Building" or the "DeYoung Building", still stands and was restored in 2007. It is an historic landmark and is the location of the Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences.
The Chronicle (Willimantic)
Born in 1857, John Anthony MacDonald had learned the newspaper business at the weekly Windham County Transcript in the eastern Connecticut town of Danielson, near his birthplace of Brooklyn, Connecticut. A 1920 history of Windham described him as a “a promotor and a plunger, who took chances. He saved his money to go West and start his own weekly newspaper.” MacDonald's westward destiny took him all of 18 miles to Willimantic. He decided that the young city might support a second daily newspapers besides "The Willimantic Journal", which had been established in 1848 and would ultimately cease publication on January 27, 1911. MacDonald initially took a job in the printing shop of C. C. Crandall on Main Street. MacDonald's name inadvertently first appeared in the "Enterprise" on October 4, 1878, when it was reported that he's been badly injured when his hand got caught in Crandall's press. Early in the fall of 1879, MacDonald bought half of the "Enterprise" from Safford plus invested additional capital to purchase new equipment: a steam-powered press. the "Enterprise" then moved to the H.C. Hall building at 60 Union Street and MacDonald became its editor and Safford its publisher.