JOA Doesn't Stop Editorial Luring p.

By: M.L. Stein

Despite a business-side joint operating agreement, the San Francisco
dailies continue to snatch away each other's reportorial stars sp.

JOINT OPERATING AGREEMENT or not, the old practice of the two San Francisco dailies snatching away each other's stars was updated recently.
Phil Matier and Andrew Ross, who have written the San Francisco Examiner's popular "The Insider's" column for the past three years, will devote their talents to the San Francisco Chronicle, beginning in mid-January.
Chronicle publisher and editor Richard Thieriot said the pair's column, which concentrates mainly on San Francisco's City Hall, will be expanded to cover the politics, personalities and government agencies in the entire San Francisco Bay area. Matier and Ross, both 39 and former City Hall reporters, have turned up a number of scoops and inside revelations concerning the city's always colorful political scene.
"We've long admired the work of Phil Matier and Andy Ross," Thieriot observed. "We're very pleased to welcome two journalists of their caliber."
The Examiner, meanwhile, is welcoming two new columnists, who will take over "The Insiders" ? City Hall reporter Jane Ganahl and KCBS Newsradio staffer Barbara Taylor, who will split her time between the paper and the station. Taylor has been City Hall bureau chief for KCBS since 1975.
Examiner executive editor Phil Bronstein said that the column's appearance will be extended beyond its current three days a week and "continue the tradition of no-holds-barred reporting."
However, there could be a squabble over ownership of the column's title.
" 'The Insiders' is a name the Examiner developed and we intend to keep it," a spokeswoman for the afternoon daily told E&P.
In an interview, Matier said a name for the Chronicle column had not yet been decided but he refused to rule out the possibility that it will be "The Insiders."
"In any event," he added, "the logo will carry the name of Matier and Ross, just as it always did."
Although the Examiner and Chronicle are bound by a joint operating agreement, their news sections are hotly competitive. However, the morning Chronicle's circulation reach is much stronger outside San Francisco than that of the Examiner, particularly in the East Bay and down the San Francisco Peninsula. The Chronicle's total daily circulation is over a half million compared with about 130,000 for the Examiner. They have a combined Sunday paper.
The practice of stealing each other's columnists and other writers in San Francisco goes back at least 50 years. Among those lured away was Chronicle columnist Herb Caen ? except that in his case it was a round trip. He broke in as a columnist for the Chronicle, defected to the Examiner, and then went back to the Chronicle.
By that time, his name was able to upstage the original title of his column, "Baghdad-by-the-Bay." Today, the column is simply headed "Herb Caen."