Jobs are up in the air at the new Chronicle

The bad news is that most of those employees have no idea what they will be doing. To make matters even more prickly, many of these employees have spent years ridiculing 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 job at the Chronicle Nov. 22.

Chronicle science writer Carl Hall sums up the angst in the two newsrooms 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 friendly rivals, even during the 35 years that they split profits under an agreement that combined their business operations. The pact required each paper to retain separate newsrooms, and the two staffs never seemed to like each other much.

The Examiner staff derided the Chronicle as the "Comical" and the Chronicle staff mocked its smaller rival as "Brand X." Sometimes, the sniping spilled on to the pages of the papers.

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

The Chronicle's staff has also taken its share of public potshots at the Examiner. One 1998 column labeled Bronstein as a "rakish Rambo" who delighted in telling stories about his past sexual conquests. The same column accused the Examiner of cheating its readers by not covering Bronstein's marriage to actress Sharon Stone more aggressively.

In a memo to the Chronicle and Examiner staffs earlier this week, the editors at the two papers urged everyone to put the rivalry behind them.

"Old grudges, egos and infighting will prevent us from (improving the Chronicle)," the memo stated. "We need to discuss problems and solutions openly and honestly, debating the merits without resorting to personal attacks or rancor."

Bronstein and his new boss at the Chronicle, Matthew Wilson, both characterize the task of pulling together two frequently antagonistic staffs as an 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, according to this week's memo.

In the process, the Chronicle hopes to reverse a decade of circulation losses and attract new readers from its foes in the San Francisco Bay area, Knight Ridder's San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times and W. Dean Singleton's ANG Newspaper Group, which includes the Oakland Tribune.

The Chronicle could benefit from a smooth merger with the Examiner staff, said newspaper industry analyst John Morton. "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."

The stakes are especially high for New York-based Hearst Corp. The media giant 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. But before that, Hearst had to endure a humiliating legal battle that raised questions about the walls separating the news and business operations at both the Examiner and Chronicle.

The immediate future looks daunting too.

A big part of the problem is Hearst's Faustian deal with Fang, who had negotiating leverage because he knew Hearst needed someone to take over the Examiner to win government approval of the Chronicle purchase.

Hearst officially became the Chronicle's owner in July, but agreed to run the Examiner, too, until Nov. 22 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.

Hearst exacerbated things by taking months to announce a new publisher at the Chronicle. Hearst appointed former Arizona Republic publisher John Oppedahl as the paper's new publisher late Thursday.

"It hasn't been a good situation," conceded the Chronicle's executive editor, Wilson, who will become executive vice president and associate publisher in the Chronicle.

Fang finally allowed 16 editors from the Chronicle and Examiner to begin meetings during the past month. The top editors aired out their animosities, according to the newsroom memo, and 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 the same topics as before. They won't find that out until Nov. 22 when the Examiner staff joins the Chronicle.

Union rules governing the newsrooms required management to post the Nov. 22 work schedules a week ago, so some of the staff, mostly from the Examiner side, know they are being transferred from San Francisco to suburban bureaus.

The editors are trying to minimize the disruption by emphasizing that no job assignment has been set in stone. "This isn't a finishing line; it's a starting line," Wilson said.<