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
The publication was founded in 1958 as a neighborhood newspaper called the "Lake Merced Independent". Marsha Fontes, a local historian, took the reins in 1979. She sold it to Ted Fang and the Fang family in 1987. As editor and publisher, Fang almost immediately began growing the "Independent", expanding from a tabloid format into a standard broadsheet size newspaper and extending distribution citywide in 1988. In 1993, Fang purchased a chain of weeklies in San Mateo County owned by the "Chicago Tribune" and in 1998 all the publications were re-branded as "The Independent". In 2000, the Fang family purchased the "SF Examiner" and the Fangs became the first Asian American family to run a major daily newspaper in America.