The All-Mandel Team or How to Staff One Great San Francisco Newspaper

Were it not for Jon Carroll, Craig Marine and Edvins Beitiks of the Examiner would be nominees for best natural writers working at a San Francisco newspaper. Marine comes from a Generation X/smartmouth-longshoreman/Keith Richards/rock-and-roll perspective, Beitiks from that of a Vietnam-vet/blue-collar/blue-Hawaii/beer hound. Both are far more sensitive than they let on, giving ordinary people miles of slack, celebrities and stuffed shirts almost none.

Steve Rubenstein and Carl Nolte are excellent writers the Chronicle doesn't know what to do with. No argument with Chronicle editors who killed Rubenstein's column -- it always hit the same note of churlish immaturity. But as a feature writer, Rubenstein has a big heart, a supple vocabulary and a point of view worth sharing. Nolte, who captivated readers with his accounts of the Liberty Ship Jeremiah O'Brien's improbable voyage to the 50th anniversary of D-Day, is a classic newspaper writer: clear, amusing, knowledgeable and concise.

No doubt you've heard somewhere about the vicious reaction to Nina Davis, the welfare mother of seven who gave her life saving three of her children during a late-January fire at the family's Hunters Point apartment. The story was carried on most Bay Area TV stations: Plenty of angry people disputed Nina Davis' being called a hero, concentrating instead on welfare and seven children.

The story originated with Annie Nakao, an Examiner writer who covered the fire and then realized, from the heated messages regarding Nina Davis pouring into her voicemail, that there was a larger story to be told. Like all the writers on my features team, Nakao has a special knack for people.

Sports Section
I'm taking the entire Chronicle sports staff -- Scott Ostler, C.W. Nevius, Joan Ryan and everybody else except Glenn Dickey -- and adding Examiner columnist Ray Ratto to cover baseball, Examiner outdoors writer Tom Stienstra to continue his Jack London-esque reports from the wild, Merv Harris on prep sports, and 49ers/track-and-field writer John Crumpacker, who, if he were ever allowed to show it, is one of the funniest writers in the Bay Area.

I'd also make sure that Examiner photographers John Storey and Mark Costantini, two wizards of catching sports action on film, were at every game possible.

Photographers-in-Chief
Pulitzer Prize-winner Kim Komenich, an amazing artist, and Katy Raddatz, of the Examiner; Scott Sommerdorf of the Chronicle.

Beat and General Assignment
City Hall: Rachel Gordon, Examiner.
Politics: Jerry Roberts, Susan Yoachum, Chronicle.
Sacramento: Tupper Hull, Examiner.
Editorials: Lynn Ludlow, Examiner.
Urban planning: Gerald Adams, Examiner.
Environment: Jane Kay, Examiner.
Legal affairs: Harriet Chiang, William Carlsen, Chronicle.
Science: Keay Davidson, Examiner.
Medicine: Lisa Krieger, Examiner.
Real Estate: Corrie Anders, Examiner.
High-tech: David Einstein, Chronicle.
Retailing: Gavin Power, Chronicle; Louis Trager, Examiner.
Business columnist: Herb Greenberg, Chronicle.
Economics: Jonathan Marshall, Chronicle.
Asian affairs: Steven Chin, Examiner.
Religion: Don Lattin, Chronicle.
Latino affairs: Susan Ferriss, Examiner.
Criminal justice: Leslie Goldberg, Examiner.

Investigations: Carla Marinucci (employer abuse of immigrant workers; Town School sex-molestation coverup), Lance Williams (executive-pay and Harboy Bay Isle-related scandals at the University of California), Seth Rosenfeld (fire dangers of Saab 9000 fuse boxes; disfiguring ruptures of Dow-Corning silicone breast implants), Examiner.

The Christianne Amanpour Wherever-There's-a-War Beat: Phil Bronstein, Examiner.

Great Staff Writers: Michael Dougan, Carol Ness, Eric Brazil, John Flinn, George Raine, Gregory Lewis, Erin McCormick, Jim Herron Zamora, Paul Avery, Vicki Haddock and Dennis Opatrny of the Examiner.

Glen Martin, Susan Sward, Aurelio Rojas, Bill Wallace, Pamela Burdman, Sylvia Rubin, Benjamin Pimentel, Sam Whiting, Stephen Schwartz, Evelyn White and Michelle Quinn of the Chronicle.

Editors
The staff I've assembled is brilliant, but I can't nominate anyone local to lead it because in 25 years of newspapering I've worked for only one supreme editor who is sufficiently humane, creative and inspiring to be worthy of this group, and he's currently taking a break from retirement to be managing editor of the New York Times: Gene Roberts.

With all this talent, management may not be a major issue if the managers know enough to get out of the talent's way. Let's consider the All-Mandel Team for One Great San Francisco Newspaper journalistically equivalent to the juggernaut 1927 Yankees of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and other members of Murderers' Row.

Who managed the 1927 Yankees? Who cares?