Last Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle editors highlighted the paper’s “10 biggest stories” of 2005. While such lists are necessarily subjective, some of the Chronicle’s choices were truly bizarre, and reflect editors who are completely out of touch with the events shaping San Francisco. The list ignores San Francisco’s rising homicide rate but highlights a pit bull killing, and includes no story that involves class conflict or political actions by elected officials. Those deciding what’s news at the Chronicle favor tales of individual scandal over systemic wrongdoing, and particularly emphasize stories they “break” despite their lack of importance. This trend that does not bode well for those seeking insight into the forces shaping San Francisco in 2006.

When one thinks of the big local stories of 2005, the departure of Archibishop Levada to the Vatican, the Wendy “finger in the chili” scandal,” the resignation of former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, and the claim that top UC officials got money on top of their salaries would not deserve a place on anyone’s top ten list. But all four made the Chronicle’s, and received saturation news coverage to boot.

While the Chronicle was providing massive coverage of those four stories, it virtually ignored stories about San Francisco’s housing boom, rise in evictions, and other land use/development debates. The paper also gave short shrift to what the Examiner highlighted as the “tumult” around Muni, the transit system whose riders increasingly forego buying the Chronicle.

The Examiner and Beyond Chron had much overlap in the top ten stories of 2005 (http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=2792), both highlighting the above issues as well as the hotel labor dispute, San Francisco’s securing the stem cell headquarters, School Superintendent Ackerman’s resignation, and the rising homicide rate. All of these issues involve the interplay of political forces that produce real news, and that impact people’s daily lives.

But the Chronicle’s highlighted stories appear designed to ignore how political decisions shape people’s lives, and to instead emphasize that people are passive observers, rather than participants, in creating news.

The Wendy chili scandal, for example, had no greater impact on San Franciscans than Jessica Simpson’s marriage break- up. Some local Catholics may have cared that Levada went to the Vatican, but its not as if this Archbishop was, like former Archbishop Quinn, a major presence in San Francisco.

Nor did San Franciscan’s have any role in determining Levada’s departure, not to mention the choice of his successor.

The Chronicle’s highlighted pit bull story is another example where political leaders bear no responsibility. Meanwhile, rising homicides in San Francisco, a solution to which Mayor Newsom has publicly taken responsibility, is not on the Chronicle’s list.

The Chronicle did include the statewide special election on its list (too hard to miss), but its only highlighted story about an individual politician was Shelley’s February 2005 resignation. But all of the relevant information about this story occurred in 2004, and the resignation appears to have been included in the Chronicle’s list solely as a reminder to readers of the paper’s role in breaking the story of the Julie Lee-Shelley connection.

Mayor Newsom, the leading topic of Chronicle news about San Francisco, is strangely absent from the paper’s top ten list. Are the editors suggesting that the high-energy Mayor is actually having little impact on San Francisco, or did they simply assume readers would know how Newsom created news in 2005?

Or it could be that Chronicle editors do not find San Francisco politics newsworthy. After all, none their top ten local and state news stories involves an event specific to San Francisco.

The contradiction between its extensive coverage of Mayor Newsom and the failure to link him to a top news story may have an even more troubling explanation: the Chronicle’s competitors also cover the Mayor’s media events, whereas the paper’s investigative team “broke” the stories about Shelley, Balco and UC salaries. The paper may have concluded that it can best increase sales by boosting its own “breaking stories,” regardless of their relative importance.

This means even less news coverage of the systemic issues shaping people’s lives in the Bay Area and more emphasis on Chronicle-discovered/invented political and government scandals.

It also means that abuses by private corporations and real estate interests, and the impact of such conduct on vulnerable Bay Area residents, will continue to be off-limits in the Chronicle news section in 2006. David Lazarus does a stellar job of publicizing corporate abuses in his Business column, but his investigative pieces rarely make the news section.

As I noted within days of the November special election, the Chronicle’s chief mission for 2006 is rehabilitating Governor Schwarzenegger. That’s why the Gov’s appointment of Democrat Susan Kennedy as chief of staff became a huge Chronicle story, as was the paper’s report on Arnold’s agreement to raise the minimum wage by a whopping $1.00—without indexing for inflation-- effective January 2007.

The Chronicle also highlighted the Governor’s pledge to rescind tuition hikes at the UC’s and CSU’s, while downplaying how dramatically he has raised college costs since becoming Governor. And today's Chronicle headline, touting Arnold's boost of school funding, could more accurately be written, "Governor's Proposed School Budget Fails to Restore Promised Funds."

There are many good reporters at the Chronicle, but it is clear from the editors’ top story choices why they face major hurdles getting meaningful stories into print.

Send feedback to rshaw@beyondchron.org