The ''Pacific Sun'' is a free distribution weekly newspaper published in

Marin County Marin County is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is acros ...

, just north of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area G ...

. It is the longest running

alternative weekly An alternative newspaper is a type of newspaper that eschews comprehensive coverage of general news in favor of stylized reporting, opinionated reviews and columns, investigations into edgy topics and magazine-style feature stories highlighting ...

in the nation and is published on Wednesdays. Since October 2019,

Daedalus Howell Daedalus Howell (born July 19, 1972), is an American writer, journalist, filmmaker, actor and conceptual artist who lives and works in Petaluma, California. He wrote the novels '' Quantum Deadline'' and ''The Late Projectionist'' and the essay ...

has been its editor.

History

The ''Pacific Sun'' was founded in April 1963 in California by Merrill and Joann Grohman in the back of a

Stinson Beach Stinson Beach is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Marin County, California, on the west coast of the United States. Stinson Beach is located east-southeast of Bolinas, at an elevation of . The population of the St ...

grocery store. In 1966, the ''Pacific Sun'' moved its offices to San Rafael. Steve McNamara, the former Sunday editor of the ''

San Francisco Examiner The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863. Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...

'', bought it from the Grohmans that year. Ten months after McNamara took over as editor, the San Francisco Press Club awarded its first prize for the best news story in a northern California non-daily paper for the ''Sun''s story “The Night Nicasio Fired the Principal”, about a school board’s firing of a principal for admitting to marijuana use. In 1984, ''The Sun'' won the award for General Excellence from the California Newspaper Publishers Association. U.S. Senator

Barbara Boxer Barbara Sue Boxer (née Levy; born November 11, 1940) is an American politician and lobbyist who served in the United States Senate, representing California from 1993 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the U.S ...

worked as a reporter for the ''Pacific Sun'' for two years in the 1970s, winning a Press Club award for a 1973 story on a state supreme court controversy. Embarcadero Media, publisher of community weeklies in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

, Mountain View and Pleasanton, purchased ''The Sun'' from McNamara in 2004. Sam Chapman, a former Chief of Staff to Senator Boxer, served as the paper's publisher until 2010. Jason Walsh served as the editor and Dani Burlison replaced Samantha Campos as staff writer in 2010, after Campos replaced Jacob Shafer in 2008. In October 2012, former Embarcadero principal Bob Heinen purchased the paper and took over as publisher. In May 2015,

Metro Newspapers Metro Newspapers, now known as Weeklys, is an American newspaper company based in San Jose, California. It publishes five free alternative weekly newspapers in Northern California: ''Metro Silicon Valley'', ''Good Times'', the '' Pacific Sun'', ...

acquired the ''Pacific Sun,'' increasing its portfolio to four Bay Area alternative weeklies. Metro restored circulation cuts that had occurred under the previous ownership and commissioned well-known typographer Jim Parkinson to redraw the Sun's nameplate. Owner

Dan Pulcrano Dan Pulcrano (born c. 1959) is a journalist, editor, publisher and newspaper group owner in Northern California. He is CEO and executive editor of ''Metro Silicon Valley'', Silicon Valley's alternative newsweekly, as well as its sister publicati ...

promised “investment and creative vision... to produce a free weekly that’s fresh, original and true to its history.” In December 2019, the Sun commemorated its 55th year of publication with longtime Mill Valley resident

Sammy Hagar Samuel Roy Hagar (born October 13, 1947), also known as the Red Rocker, is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He rose to prominence in the early 1970s with the hard rock band Montrose and subsequently launched a successful solo car ...

on its cover.

''The Serial''

Cyra McFadden’s 1977 best seller, '' The Serial: a Year in the Life of Marin County'', began as a series of 52 installments in the ''Sun''. In 1980,

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...

made a movie titled '' Serial'' based on the book.

References

External links

''Pacific Sun'' website
{{Metro Newspapers Newspapers published in the San Francisco Bay Area Alternative weekly newspapers published in the United States San Rafael, California Newspapers established in 1963 1963 establishments in California Mass media in Marin County, California Weekly newspapers published in California