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.
The San Francisco Examiner
Through the middle third of the twentieth century, the "Examiner" was one of several dailies competing for the city's and the Bay Area's readership; the San Francisco "News", the San Francisco "Call-Bulletin", and the "Chronicle" all claimed significant circulation, but ultimately attrition left the "Examiner" one chief rival — the "Chronicle". Strident competition prevailed between the two papers in the 1950s and 1960s; the "Examiner" boasted, among other writers, such columnists as veteran sportswriter Prescott Sullivan, the popular Herb Caen, who took an eight-year hiatus from the "Chronicle" (1950–1958), and Kenneth Rexroth, one of the best-known men of California letters and a leading San Francisco Renaissance poet, who contributed weekly impressions of the city from 1960 to 1967. Ultimately, circulation battles ended in a merging of resources between the two papers.