Oakland Tribune Banner Adorns a New Paper : Press: Alameda Group’s slicker version replaces the daily that had served the city for 118 years.

One newspaper era ended and another began on Monday in this troubled city east of San Francisco.

The 118-year-old Oakland Tribune, which Publisher Robert C. Maynard gallantly struggled to preserve for nearly a decade, published its last issue. In its place comes a slicker version of the paper, now owned by Texas-based Publisher William Dean Singleton’s Alameda Newspaper Group.

To emphasize the changing of the guard, a caret with the word new has been inserted into the masthead. The newspaper might look similar to the casual reader, but much has changed.

Alameda Newspaper Group, which publishes four other papers in Alameda County, bought only the Oakland Tribune’s name and a few other assets. All 630 staff members--from press operators to drivers to photographers--lost their jobs, although about 50 newsroom employees were among those hired for the new operation. The new Tribune, which will include “pool” sports, business and feature coverage from the company’s other papers, will be printed at the Hayward Daily Review.

The trimmed-down editorial staff reported for duty in spiffy new offices in a former Port of Oakland building on Jack London Square, with views of gently bobbing sailboats and container-ship docks. “Ergonomically correct” desks, new computers, tweedy gray carpeting and clean-as-a-whistle supplies--installed in just 24 days--replaced the decrepit facilities at Oakland’s fabled Tribune Tower, the paper’s home since 1918.

The excitement was palpable Monday morning as reporters and editors--many of whom had lingered the night before at a subdued farewell party in a nearby bar--went about the business of putting out their first paper in the midst of hammer-pounding and technical glitches.

“These are the best working conditions I’ve had in 27 years,” said Harry Harris, 44, a veteran police reporter who turned down a job at the San Francisco Chronicle to stay with the Tribune, for which he has worked almost nonstop since he was a 17-year-old copy boy. “I liked the idea of having ownership that had money and resources.”

By 11 a.m. Monday, City Editor Charles Jackson was looking somewhat dazed as he answered a caller’s question about circulation. The news meeting was coming up, and he hadn’t been apprised of all the stories working for the next morning’s paper.

When a reporter wandered over to alert him to a photo opportunity for a feature, he said: “Tell the photo chief, although I can’t remember his name.”

An atmosphere of controlled chaos permeated the newsroom as technicians held last-minute computer-training classes and reporters wrestled with the unfamiliar phone system. The library was still under construction, so reporters had no way to call for clippings. The fax machines weren’t yet working.

Pearl Stewart, 42, the Tribune’s new editor and the first African-American woman to head a major metropolitan daily, was getting her trial by fire on Monday. A long-time East Bay reporter who worked at the Tribune years ago, she intends for the new Oakland Tribune to be as aggressive in its coverage as was its predecessor.

“A lot of people said the paper had too many negative stories about Oakland,” she said. “They only want all this rah-rah boosterism.

“(But) we still have to be a newspaper. Journalistically, we’d be in trouble if all we wrote about was how wonderful everything is in Oakland.”