We were blessed to have Carl as our Guest Speaker at our Autumn General meeting last December 8th at New St. Mary's Cathedral. Vaya Con Dios Carl.
By Carl Nolte, Contributor June 13, 2026 -San Francisco Chronicle
This weekend marks the 65th anniversary of my first day at the San Francisco Chronicle. It has been a lifetime of newspapering, but now it’s time to step away. This is my last column.
I’ve had a lot of roles: an editor, reporter, war correspondent and, for the past few years, a columnist and sometime photographer. It’s been an honor, a privilege and a pleasure to have worked for the Chronicle all these years. But now it’s time. The Bible says it best: For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose.
After 65 years of covering the world, a Native Son says goodbye
Quick and Dirty
This weekend marks the 65th anniversary of my first day at the San Francisco Chronicle. It has been a lifetime of newspapering, but now it’s time to step away. This is my last column.
I’ve had a lot of roles: an editor, reporter, war correspondent and, for the past few years, a columnist and sometime photographer. It’s been an honor, a privilege and a pleasure to have worked for the Chronicle all these years. But now it’s time. The Bible says it best: For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose.
I never wanted to be one of those people who hung around too long, like an athlete past his prime or a politician making one last run.
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Carl Nolte aboard one of the U.S. Navy’s F/A-18 Hornets during an aerial demonstration over the Bay Area with the Blue Angels in 1994.
Vince Maggiora/S.F. Chronicle
I wanted to stay while the job was still interesting. Only last week I got to prowl around the machinery in the cable car barn, a place that has always fascinated me, and I wrote a column about it. Not bad, either. I remembered the old advice: Quit while you’re ahead.
People used to ask me why I stayed at the paper so long. I usually had a flip answer: “I lack ambition,” I’d say, or, “I can’t hold a real job.” But the truth is I thought newspapering was fascinating. I’m a San Francisco guy, a Native Son, and this is my hometown paper. I thought it was an adventure, something different almost every day. But it’s a tough business, too. Sometimes the words don’t come and you are staring at a blank screen. You are only as good as your last story, and that better be good.
Longtime Chronicle reporter and columnist Carl Nolte, who is retiring after 65 years at the paper, takes the 14-Mission Muni bus in October 1996.
Deanne Fitzmaurice/S.F. Chronicle
“Newspapers will always break your heart,” Pete Hamill, the New York columnist, wrote once. I cut out his words and pasted them over my computer terminal.
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I got into the business not long after my years at the University of San Francisco, where I was the sports editor of the Foghorn, our prizewinning weekly paper. I got hooked on sports and print journalism, and when I heard of a job at the Chronicle, I jumped on it.
You never forget your first day at school, so I still think of my first day at the Chronicle: June 13, 1961, exactly 65 years ago this weekend.
Reporter Carl Nolte at his desk in the Chronicle newsroom at 901 Mission St. in March 1967.
Bob Campbell/S.F. Chronicle
I’d been hired as a copy editor, despite my somewhat shaky credentials. The job was to edit copy — the reporters’ work and wire service news. We tightened the prose and polished the adjectives, hopefully making the copy better. We also wrote the headlines.
In those pre-internet days, we worked with paper copy and edited with pencils. A good pencil editor was valued. This first copy desk position was a weeklong tryout. If you lasted a week, they might keep you for a summer. I lasted a lifetime.
I sat there that first day, working away, not sure of what I was doing. Dick Friendlich, a sports reporter who’d helped me get the job, came by. “What do you think?” he said. I thought it was great. “Look around,” he said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
I looked around and saw a battered and messy newsroom full of life. Reporters on deadline, pounding on manual typewriters, the classic Loyal Royal, people all talking at once, phones ringing. The air was full of noise, news, tension and cigarette smoke. I thought it was magic.
Carl Nolte speaks at a news briefing on the day columnist Herb Caen died in February 1997.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
I stayed on the copy desk for a while, then moved up to be editor of the Sunday Punch section, which ran the best of the paper once a week: Herb Caen, Stanton Delaplane, Art Hoppe, Art Rosenbaum, even Count Marco, a hairdresser who gave sexist advice to women. We had a big Sunday circulation then, 700,000 copies sometimes. It was a high-profile job.
Later, I got to be an assistant city editor, working with reporters. Quite a time: the Zebra, the Zodiac, the Patricia Hearst kidnapping, Moscone and Milk. Author David Talbot called it “The Season of the Witch.” I was on the city desk all this time, but I’m not sure I was a good fit. So after 18 years as an editor, I took a promotion in reverse. Now I was a reporter.
That’s what I really wanted. It gave me a front row seat to the world. I covered everything — car crashes, the weather, obituaries, floods, forest fires, murders, a little politics, the cops, low-grade scandals, even baseball now and then.
Carl Nolte interviews a pig along the Gold Rush Trail in Kansas on his way to California in 1998.
Brant Ward/S.F. Chronicle
The Chronicle was open to new ideas and stories, and reporters like me were able to travel across the country and halfway around the world for the paper.
“This is the greatest job in the world,” Jerry Carroll, another reporter, told me once. He quit, though, and went off to Montana to write novels. I stayed.
I’m glad I did. It all led to years of interesting assignments. I chatted with Queen Elizabeth II on the royal yacht, met four presidents of the United States, was invited to lunch with the bodyguard of an Arab emir, rode a fire engine, siren screaming, on a midnight run down dark San Francisco streets, sailed out the Golden Gate on an old ship and turned left, bound for Europe. I didn’t come back for a month, the sea adventure of a lifetime.
Chronicle reporter Carl Nolte, center front, with the First Platoon Charlie Company on the Iraq-Kuwait border just hours before it crossed the border into Iraq in 2003. Standing behind Nolte is Staff Sgt. Benito Rodriguez, who later won the bronze star with V for valor.
Courtesy of Carl Nolte
The paper assigned me to the Persian Gulf War, later to the invasion of Iraq, embedded with the Seventh Infantry Regiment. I was in the back of an armored vehicle with five soldiers. I had the seat of honor, next to the hand grenades.
More recently, I was able to write a Sunday column about San Francisco called Native Son. The column was then-editor Ward Bushee’s idea. He launched it in 2008 and the column ran for 17½ years. It was an honor and a privilege to work for the Chronicle, and I’m grateful to the managers and editors who made it possible. But it’s time.
Longtime Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte, shown Friday, is signing off after a lifetime of newspapering in which he served as reporter, editor, war correspondent and sometime photographer.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
What’s next? Maj. Gen. J. Michael Myatt gave me good advice when he left the Marine Corps and started a new career. “Never retire from life,” he said. I have a family cabin in the woods, a nice boat and my faithful companion, the Sailor Girl, who is always ready for new adventures. We thank you for reading. See you around.
Greg