San Francisco Chronicle prepares for an awkward transition

Tuesday, November 21st 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Former reporters at the San Francisco Examiner will begin working side-by-side this week with their former rivals at the San Francisco Chronicle. It could prove to be an unpleasant experience.

The Hearst Corp. will hand off the Examiner to a new owner and give its full attention to the Chronicle starting on Wednesday. The Examiner's 200 newsroom employees are guaranteed jobs at the Chronicle.

The problem is that most of those Examiner employees have no idea what they will be doing. And many of them have spent years ridiculing the Chronicle reporters, editors and photographers who will now be their colleagues.

``It's going to be a bumpy transition, no question about it. The first few weeks will be pretty chaotic,'' said Examiner Executive Editor Phil Bronstein, who will assume the same title at the Chronicle on Wednesday.

Chronicle science writer Carl Hall put it more colorfully: ``After a long, torturous buildup, there has been plenty of time for the anxiety to build to monstrous proportions. I think we will be kind of like a dog trying to walk on its hind legs during the first few weeks.''

The Chronicle and Examiner have never been particularly friendly, even during the 35 years that they split profits under an agreement that combined their business operations.

The pact required the newspapers to maintain separate newsrooms. The Examiner staff derided the Chronicle as the ``Comical,'' and the Chronicle staff mocked its smaller rival as ``Brand X.'' Sometimes, the sniping spilled onto the pages of the respective papers.

``What's the difference between supermarket tabloids and the San Francisco Chronicle?'' Examiner columnist Rob Morse wrote in 1999. ``Not only are the tabloids more entertaining, but they have higher journalistic standards.''

A 1998 column in the Chronicle branded Bronstein a ``rakish Rambo'' who delighted in telling war stories about his sexual conquests. The same column accused the Examiner of cheating its readers by not more aggressively covering Bronstein's marriage to actress Sharon Stone.

In a memo to the Chronicle and Examiner staffs earlier this week, the editors at the two papers urged everyone to put aside ``old grudges, egos and infighting.''

Bronstein and his new boss at the Chronicle, Matthew Wilson, characterize the task of pulling together two frequently antagonistic staffs as a rare opportunity to create a journalistic powerhouse.

They believe the 60 percent increase in the Chronicle's newsroom personnel should enable the paper to provide more thorough, in-depth coverage. The paper also plans to expand the space for news by four pages.

In the process, the Chronicle hopes to reverse a decade of circulation losses and attract new readers from its most formidable foes in the San Francisco Bay area, the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times and The Oakland Tribune.

``There's potential for a major improvement and to the extent that the Chronicle spends more on editorial, I think it will be in the suburbs, where the real battle will be fought,'' newspaper industry analyst John Morton said.

The Chronicle has a daily circulation of about 457,000, compared with about 96,000 at the Examiner.

Hearst spent $660 million to buy the Chronicle and is doling out an additional $66 million over three years to help the Examiner's new owner, Ted Fang, run that paper.

Just to get to that point, Hearst had to endure a humiliating legal battle that raised questions about the firewalls separating the news and business operations at both the Examiner and Chronicle.

A big part of the problem now is the bargain that Hearst worked out with Fang, who had negotiating leverage because he knew Hearst needed someone to take over the Examiner to win Justice Department antitrust approval of the Chronicle purchase.

Hearst officially became the Chronicle's owner in July but agreed to run the Examiner too until Wednesday to give Fang time to hire a new staff. During those four months, Fang's contract prohibited the staffs of the Chronicle and Examiner from talking to each other.

Fang finally allowed 16 editors from the Chronicle and Examiner to begin meetings during the past month. In those meetings, the top editors drew up provisional list of job assignments for the 540 reporters, editors and photographers who will work on the Chronicle's enlarged staff.

But the Fang contract still prevents any of the editors from telling the staffs at the Chronicle and Examiner whether they will be covering essentially the same topics before or something entirely different. The new order can't be revealed until Wednesday, when the Examiner staff joins the Chronicle.