Description
The San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The paper is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which bought it from the de Young family in 2000. It is the only major daily paper covering the city and county of San Francisco.
The paper benefited from the growth of San Francisco and had the largest newspaper circulation on the West Coast of the United States by 1880. Like other newspapers, it has experienced a rapid fall in circulation in the early 21st century and was ranked 24th by circulation nationally for the six months to March 2010.
In 1994, the newspaper launched the SFGATE website, including both content from the paper and other sources. In 2013, the newspaper launched its own namesake website, SFChronicle.com, and began the separation of the SFGATE and Chronicle brands, which today are two separately run entities.
