Phil Bronstein's Blog
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May.06.2009
John Kerry wants to save newspapers. Or something like that.
Anyway he's holding DC hearings on the subject today, presumably goosed by the fact that his hometown Boston Globe has been teetering on the brink of oblivion. Getting as testifiers Arianna Huffington, never dull, and David Simon, former...
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May.04.2009
In a very tight, tented-off square upstairs at the Castro Theater, a photographer had handed Robert Redford the small pyramid crystal award he'd be getting the next night from the SF International Film Festival.
"Just do something with it," the shooter said a little gruffly to the man...
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3 comments
Apr.30.2009
If everyone is wearing surgical masks, what's Michael Jackson going to do?
It's an important question for Neverland fans, but about as useless and untimely in the swine flu panic of '09 as the debates about closing the border door with Mexico after the virus has already galloped through.
The real...
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1 comment
Apr.28.2009
What's the difference between these two couples: Mr. And Mrs. Gavin Newsom and Benjamin Bratt and his wife, Talisa Soto Bratt?
They're all unquestionably very attractive people, as the Chronicle noted about the "beautiful (mayoral) couple" Sunday. But after seeing the Bratts in their...
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2 comments
Apr.24.2009
Note to Bill O'Reilly:
Iowa is the new San Francisco.
I can barely write that sentence without my hands shaking at the thought of the city I grew up in losing its punch line status on right-leaning talk shows and slightly more sympathetic late night comedy hours.
But with an absentee mayor and a $...
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3 comments
Apr.21.2009
Waterboarding is for amateurs.
This weekend, I visited the reconstruction of a medieval castle in Calistoga, imported by vintner Daryl Sattui brick-by-brick from Europe. It included a dungeon with an anatomically correct rack -- did you know they not only stretched people, there was also a roller...
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2 comments
Apr.16.2009
I saw the lame remake of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" on a plane last week but it didn't strike me until today that our globe is actually spinning backwards.
As of now, we're somewhere back in the 17- or 1800s.
The comeback of pirates should have been a major clue, like the...
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1 comment
Apr.14.2009
The death of enduring, workhorse porn star Marilyn Chambers and the murder conviction of genius nutjob Phil Spector have a symphonic convergence worthy of one of Mr. Spector's famous sound walls. (Personally, I'll never forgive him for turning the rumbling, roadhouse jalopy gospel/blues of Ike and...
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4 comments
Apr.08.2009
Do you want to know what you're likely to die of, and when? OK, that's either brave or foolish. Or do you have that anxiety gene where anything about the future becomes a tortured Woody Allen interior monologue and you just don't want to hear about it?
Maybe you have a risk factor for heavier than...
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2 comments
Apr.07.2009
It's embarrassing how far behind we are on this growing national trend when we're usually so ahead of the cultural curve. Something like 75 communities across the country are already printing their own money. After all, it's good enough for the feds, whose presses are rolling off hundreds of...
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Apr.06.2009
I know we're enmeshed in the drama of newspaper necropsy lately, with friends who are also valuable professional contributors to the fabric of society walking out the door of newsrooms. But we must have at least enough gumption left over for some collective journalistic interest, concern and...
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5 comments
Mar.19.2009
It's still refreshing to have Barack Obama once again say he'll "take responsibility," this time for the AIG bonus mess. It also happens to be so much easier to say that about a mess you had nothing to do with, because then you can be responsible and outraged at the same time. Talk about...
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3 comments
Mar.14.2009
I was in Washington this week, where most satire happens, however inadvertently, and on a plane back to SF when Jon Stewart apparently crashed through a(nother) cultural barrier: for several years we'd been hand-wringing about the Daily Show replacing traditional news sources. Now, after just a few...
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4 comments
Feb.23.2009
Social commentator Star Jones, who manages to look younger and thinner every time she shows up anywhere out in the open, captured today's deep political and cultural undercurrent in a comment this weekend to CNN's D.L. Hughley about why Alex Rodriguez and his steroid problem get more attention than...
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1 comment
Feb.18.2009
It seems as though water boarding "stunt journalist" Christopher Hitchens has gotten himself into hot water of a different variety in Beirut. According to reports, Hitchens was apparently visiting Lebanon and ran into a misunderstanding over a defaced Syrian Social Nationalist party (...
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About Phil
Phil Bronstein was Executive Vice President and Editor-at-Large of Hearst Newspapers Division and the San Francisco Chronicle until becoming Executive Chairman of the CIR, the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2012.
As Editor-at-Large, Bronstein was...
Causes Phil Bronstein Supports
Good Ones; anything involving the possibility of redemption.
Phil’s Favorite Books
“Death in the Family” by Philip Agee
Short Stories by H.E. Bates (not the novels)