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San Francisco Chronicle Building, Mission Street
In 1865 two teenagers, Charles de Young, 19 and his brother Michael, 17 started a new newspaper called The Daily Dramatic Chronicle. The paper grew and thrived and by 1890 the Chronicle's 10-story building was the tallest building in the West. Today that newspaper, now The San Francisco Chronicle, is 13th largest newspaper in the United States. Writers for the Chronicle have included Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Herb Caen, Pauline "Dear Abby" Phillips, Charles McCabe, and Armistead Maupin. The Chronicle has won numerous Pulitzer Prizes and today has a daily circulation of over 400,000 with 5.2 million unique users per month to its online edition SFGate.com.

A personal anecdote, on the morning after the 1989 earthquake I walked downtown and purchased one of the very few Chronicle newspapers that had been published that day. Widespread power outages had forced the Chronicle to use Macintosh computers to produce the edition, an unheard of process at that time. With no electricity for radios or television, San Franciscans were hungry for earthquake news and my rare paper drew a crowd. One stranger offered me $20 for my newspaper and while I shared the paper with many people that day, I still have that yellowing edition stored away in my home.
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