4 Top Execs Leaving San Francisco Newspaper Firm

In a continuing shake-up at the top of San Francisco’s beleaguered media industry, four top officers of the agency that oversees advertising and operations for the Chronicle and Examiner newspapers quit en masse Friday.

Resigning from the San Francisco Newspaper Agency were Robert McCormick, president and chief executive; Thomas Clancy, executive vice president of sales and marketing; Lawrence Ingram, senior vice president of operations, and John Raytis, vice president of circulation.

The agency has overseen the papers since 1965, when a joint operating agreement was established as the two rival publications were engaged in a bloody and costly circulation battle.

Chronicle Publishing Co., which publishes the city’s dominant paper, recently installed outsiders at the helm for the first time in its 128 years as a family-owned business.