At a time when local publishers worldwide are wrestling with shrinking ad margins and platform disruption, San Francisco Chronicle Publisher and CEO Bill Nagel offered a candid, sometimes provocative look at how Hearst Bay Area is reinventing itself to survive — and thrive — through diversification, experimentation, and consumer focus.

Speaking to INMA study tour attendees during Media Tech & AI Week in San Francisco, Nagel said the Chronicle’s success lies in “having multiple oars in the water.” 

The company now operates across five lines of business — the paid Chronicle site, free site SFGATE, a printing business, a marketing agency, and a spun-off native advertising studio.

Redefining brand roles and audiences

One of the company’s most decisive moves since Nagel took over seven years ago has been to separate the Chronicle and SFGATE completely — editorially, commercially, and even in event marketing.

When he arrived, readers were confused about which site was which. “People told me, ‘I love the Chronicle, I subscribe to SFGATE,’” Nagel said. “We said we’ll completely split them.”

Today, the Chronicle is the paid, hyper-local, Bay Area brand, with around 150,000 digital subscribers, while SFGATE is the free, ad-supported site expanding across the West Coast. SFGATE has roughly 35 million uniques — bigger than in-state peers, Nagel said.

A meaningful amount of SFGATE traffic now comes from a Los Angeles bureau launched with a small team of journalists, while another 10% comes from its national parks coverage — a beat that started as a one-editor experiment and became a runaway success. 

SFGATE’s programmatic model removes many ad-servicing costs, and Nagel credited Hearst’s New York-based team for “maintaining rate integrity” in a low-CPM environment. Meanwhile, the Chronicle stays focused on deeply local coverage of San Francisco and Oakland, with print subscribers still receiving seven-day delivery.

Experiments in membership and value

The Chronicle is re-examining its consumer strategy as generative AI reshapes how audiences access information, Nagel said. 

Chronicle editors created their own ChatGPT newsletters to see how long it takes for freshly published content to show up in their newsfeed — and it’s a couple of hours,” he said. Why subscribe if you can get it for free two hours later?

His answer lies in building membership-based value rather than transactional subscriptions. 

“I think there’s some perceived value in getting content a couple of hours earlier than anybody else,” he said. “We have to do a better job of engagement and perceived value for our readers.”

That value increasingly comes from access and community, Nagel said: “What people want is more of what you’re offering. They don’t want somebody else’s.” 

The Chronicle now hosts sold-out subscriber-only events with local partners, such as its “Top 100 Restaurants” celebration, while pairing those events with large, financially viable advertisers. “It builds that relationship with advertisers, we get loyalty, and the readers see added value,” he said.

Betting on print longevity

While many peers have reduced print frequency, Nagel said the Chronicle remains committed to a seven-day printed newspaper, with transparent pricing and loyal readers paying a premium.

“Print is going to be here for the long haul,” he said. “Our readers want the product, they’re willing to pay for it.”

Lessons for the industry

Nagel’s central message to INMA delegates was resilience through experimentation. 

“Things are moving fast — you’ve got to adjust, you’ve got to try things,” he said. 

The Chronicle’s approach — testing small, scaling what works, cutting what doesn’t — has allowed it to be successful even as ad markets tighten and AI reshapes distribution.

For fellow publishers, his advice was direct: “Take as many ideas as you can from your colleagues. If you can get a million-dollar idea out of your trip here, it’s going to pay for itself.”

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