Word: thieriot
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Prime shaker of the quake that started the Chronicle rolling was energetic Assistant Publisher Charles de Young Thieriot, who later became editor and publisher. A descendant of Charles and Michael de Young, teen-age brothers who founded the Chronicle in 1865 on a borrowed $20 gold piece, Thieriot gave the job of blowing a fresh breeze through the Chronicle's fogbound pages to suave Scott Newhall, also a member of a leading San Francisco family. As executive editor, Newhall scrapped the Chronicle's old makeup of sober type marching row on row for a blaze of bold, black...
...Thieriot and Newhall still lacked just the man to turn the liberal Republican Chronicle into a breakfast treat instead of a treatment: curly-haired, puckish San Franciscophile Herb Caen (pronounced Cane), 43, the columnist who defected to Hearst's morning Examiner in 1950 for a doubled salary of $30,000. In 1957, Prodigal Son Caen decided to return (for $38,000 a year), leaving the Examiner (circ. 257,251) with little humor to perk up its somber pages. "The day I knew we had come around the corner," says Publisher Thieriot, "is the day Herb Caen decided to come...
...another, chunky Charley Thieriot has been trying to get the Chronicle firmly in the black. Soon after he became assistant publisher three years ago, 37 staffers were given notice, and Editor Paul Smith (now boss of Collier's) quit in protest. Last year Managing Editor Larry Fanning resigned, according to city-room gossip, because of Thieriot's determination to pinch more pennies out of the news budget...
...Thieriot, who will eventually fall heir to one-sixth of the Chronicle's stock, is a grandson of the Chronicle's cofounder, Mike de Young. He grew up in San Francisco, graduated from Princeton ('36) and went to the Chronicle as a copy boy. He spent four years as reporter and rewrite man, then moved over to the business side, sold ads, ran circulation and negotiated labor contracts. After a wartime stint in the Navy, where he was a lieutenant commander, he came back as assistant business manager of the Chronicle. He opened and managed the paper...
...boost Chronicle circulation, Thieriot has spent lavishly for such stunts as "treasure hunts" and "mystery face" contests. But on news-gathering expenses he has kept a tight hold. For example, when the worst forest fires in 30 years broke out in California this fall, Chronicle staffers covered the story by telephone for the first three days. Finally Thieriot okayed the expense of sending one reporter-photographer team 200-odd miles to the Sequoia National Park, but by then the fire was almost out. While he gives editors a free hand at assigning stories, Thieriot makes the decision...