The Styrous® Viewfinder: The Oakland Daily Tribune ~ 1874

February 21, 2025

The Oakland Daily Tribune ~ 1874

Oakland Tribune Tower - 2023

photo by Styrous®

A hundred and fifty years ago, on February 21, 1874, the Oakland Daily Tribune began publication and became an influential daily newspaper.

The Oakland Daily Tribune was first printed at 468 Ninth Street. The first editorial stated, "There seems to be an open field for a journal like the Tribune in Oakland, and we accordingly proceed to occupy it, presenting the Tribune, which is intended to be a permanent daily paper, deriving its support solely from advertising patronage."

The paper was renamed the Oakland Tribune on August 28, 1891, and was a charter member of the Associated Press upon its founding in 1900.

The newspapers of San Francisco were destroyed in the earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906. The Tribune printed many "extras. Owner William E. Dargie lent the Tribune's presses for a joint edition of the San Francisco Call-Chronicle-Examiner. In the aftermath of the conflagration, San Francisco Mayor Eugene E. Schmitz, declared the Oakland Tribune the official San Francisco newspaper.

The Tribune was moved to its present location at 13th and Franklin Streets on March 25, 1918. The 305 feet tall Tribune Tower, an Oakland landmark, was completed in 1923. The Tribune moved its business into the tower in 1924; that year the Oakland Tribune held a "Dream" contest; a woman won the contest and a film about her dream was created (YouTube link below).

The Tribune had a conservative editorial position and a reputation for being strongly pro-business. As the city of Oakland became more ethnically and politically diverse in the 1960s and 1970s, the Tribune was unable to respond quickly enough to the demographic changes (and the political and social unrest exemplified, among other factors, by the University of California, Berkeley, student uprisings and the Black Panther movement). The Tribune's readership declined after the early 1960s as a large portion of the paper's traditional subscription base relocated to the newly developing suburbs south and east of Oakland.

In 1983, Nancy Hicks Maynard, and her husband, Raymond Maynard (link below), purchased the Tribune for $17 million in the first management-led leveraged buyout in U.S. newspaper history. It was also historic for the Tribune becoming the first major metropolitan daily newspaper owned by an African-American. This was seen as especially notable as Oakland was developing a relatively large African-American community which, by the 1980s, was becoming increasingly influential in local business and politics. Maynard helped restore the paper's reputation, earning a Pulitzer Prize in 1990.

The Tribune Tower was severely damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake of October 17, 1989; the paper continued to publish there until it moved it to a building located in Jack London Square in Oakland at the edge of San Francisco Bay. The Tower sat empty until 1995, when John Protopappas purchased it for $300,000. His company, Madison Park Financial Corporation, renovated the Tower in the late 1990s. The Tribune returned to the Tower after it reopened in 1999.

On May 20, 2007, the Tribune moved permanently from the Tribune Tower to new offices on Oakport Street, across Interstate 880 from the Oakland Coliseum. The Tribune Tower, a local and national landmark, remains, now housing several businesses and a ground-floor cafe.

With the decline of print media, in 2016, the paper announced that the Tribune, along with its owner's other newspapers in the East Bay, would be folded into a new newspaper titled the East Bay Times starting April 5, 2016. The last daily edition of the Tribune was published on April 4, 2016.