Chris Gulker
Encyclopedia
Christian Frederick Gulker (March 10, 1951—October 27, 2010) was an American photographer, programmer, writer, and pioneer in electronic publishing.
A "Silicon Valley
pioneer," Gulker was "instrumental in introducing the digital publishing era to the newspaper industry" and was a central figure in the early history of blogging.
. He was a 1969 graduate of Western Reserve Academy
of Hudson, Ohio
, and an alumnus of Occidental College
, Los Angeles, California, where he earned a degree in Comparative Literature
. He worked as a dishwasher, cab driver, tow truck operator and barman before he was hired in 1978 as a staff photographer at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
, where the photography department came to view him as "one of its brightest stars." He also worked as a freelancer, and has been published in Time
, Newsweek
, Vanity Fair
, Rolling Stone
, Glamour
and the New York Times and was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
. Gulker contributed to the National Press Photographers Association
's Electronic Photojournalism Workshop.
Turning the Examiner into a "digital laboratory," he converted the newspaper from black and white to color by implementing a production system of his own design that used Macintosh
es to do color separations and made The Examiner the first major American daily to switch to full-color production using desktop technology, with the first colored front page printed in January 1990. Gulker's "'hacked-together' color calibration system allowed the Examiner to incorporate color for less than it cost other papers," making him "a leader in developing in-house capabilities to use color electronic images daily on deadline."
Gulker's work, which redefined "the state of the art in editorial production methods among print-on-paper media," was driven by necessity. The Examiner, having recently switched from on-site letterpress equipment to a new flexographic
press, wanted to use the new printing plant's color capability. However, under the joint operating agreement between the Examiner and its local rival, the San Francisco Chronicle
, any changes to the production facility, such as introducing color, would have required the consent of both parties to the agreement, and the Chronicle wasn't interested. To produce color for the new press, the Examiner therefore had to handle it in the newsroom.
Gulker became director of development in November 1992.
In 1994, Gulker's editorial workflow system, dubbed the "virtual newsroom", was demonstrated at both Seybold shows
and supported the creation of "a real Internet newspaper that used the 'Net throughout the process from story and photo solicitation to delivery." The system provided the publishing infrastructure for The Gate, the online newspaper jointly operated by the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle
, which made its precipitous debut on November 3, 1994 and came to be officially launched on 5 April 1995.
, Gulker came to run a pilot project called The Electric Examiner, which routed wire-service stories to the Web. Gulker wanted to expand this "prototype of a future Web site" to distributing the actual reporting produced at the Examiner but was frustrated in this ambition, as the Examiner was bound by a joint operating agreement with its local rival, the San Francisco Chronicle
, and could not move on its own when it came to venturing into new distribution modes. When Gulker's project was previewed in August 1994 under the name The Gate as a joint operation between the two newspapers, it was judged the "furthest ahead" among efforts to bring newspapers online.
The Electric Examiner became a focus of attention in the first two weeks of November 1994, when San Francisco's two major newspapers were hit by a strike
in which some 2,600 journalists, editors, lorry drivers, press operators and paper handlers walked off their jobs. Gulker did not join them. He sided with management and set to work launching The Gate ahead of its scheduled debut in late November by modifying his system so that the Electric Examiner would now appear daily on The Gate. For the duration of the strike, Gulker's operation, which remained "heavily dependent on wire-service stories" for lack of contributing journalists and editors, was the official online version of San Francisco's two largest newspapers. On one day during the strike, according to Gulker, "the Examiner delivered 80,000 print editions, while its Web site recorded 93,038 accesses." Gulker was aware of the shortcomings of his project but hoped it would blaze a trail for online journalism after the strike, "when the full resources of the paper are available again."
Within two days, the striking journalists set up their own online newspaper, the San Francisco Free Press, and competed with The Gate as "the soul of the Examiner and the Chronicle." Led by the Examiners associate editor Bruce Koon and former SF Weekly editor Marcelo Rodriguez, they operated from a makeshift newsroom using their own hardware and a local ISP for rented server space. The strike lasted 11 days and its competition between two online newspapers has been hailed as "a milestone for online news."
s for prepress
productivity gains.
's Scripting News and ran on Winer's Frontier publishing software. Gulker, anticipating the work of Jorn Barger
, was the first to propose a network
of blog
gers and pioneered two of the most effective means through which blogging emerged as a social medium, the blogroll and link attribution.
From 1997 until 2003, Gulker contributed his column "The View from Silicon Valley" to the weekly technology supplement of the British newspaper The Independent
, in which he distinguished himself through "sharp wit and literary ability".
From 2004 to 2007, Gulker was product manager for the Acrobat
family at Adobe Systems
.
brain tumor in October 2006. In his final years, despite his advancing paralysis, he traveled to France, took a tour of the American South, visited friends and shared his experiences as a cancer patient via his blog. Deciding against "heroic end-of-life measures" he opted for palliative care rather than continued treatment.
In July 2010, his oncologist
informed him that he had only a few months to live. Gulker died peacefully at his home on October 27, 2010, aged 59. He was survived by his wife of 29 years, Linda Hubbard Gulker.
A "Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
pioneer," Gulker was "instrumental in introducing the digital publishing era to the newspaper industry" and was a central figure in the early history of blogging.
Early Years
Born in New York City, Gulker grew up on the shores of Lake Erie near Erie, PennsylvaniaErie, Pennsylvania
Erie is a city located in northwestern Pennsylvania in the United States. Named for the lake and the Native American tribe that resided along its southern shore, Erie is the state's fourth-largest city , with a population of 102,000...
. He was a 1969 graduate of Western Reserve Academy
Western Reserve Academy
Western Reserve Academy is a private, mid-sized, coeducational boarding and day college preparatory school located in Hudson, Ohio.-History:...
of Hudson, Ohio
Hudson, Ohio
Hudson is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 22,262 at the 2010 census. It is an affluent exurban community and is part of the Akron, Ohio Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, and an alumnus of Occidental College
Occidental College
Occidental College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1887, Occidental College, or "Oxy" as it is called by students and alumni, is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges on the West Coast...
, Los Angeles, California, where he earned a degree in Comparative Literature
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
. He worked as a dishwasher, cab driver, tow truck operator and barman before he was hired in 1978 as a staff photographer at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
The Los Angeles Herald Examiner was a major Los Angeles daily newspaper, published Monday through Friday in the afternoon, and in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays. It was part of the Hearst syndicate. The afternoon Herald-Express and the morning Examiner, both of which had been publishing in...
, where the photography department came to view him as "one of its brightest stars." He also worked as a freelancer, and has been published in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, Glamour
Glamour (magazine)
Glamour is a women's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. Founded in 1939 in the United States, it was originally called Glamour of Hollywood....
and the New York Times and was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
. Gulker contributed to the National Press Photographers Association
National Press Photographers Association
NPPA is the acronym for the National Press Photographers Association, founded in 1947. The organization is based in Durham, North Carolina and its mostly made up of still photographers, television videographers, editors, and students in the journalism field...
's Electronic Photojournalism Workshop.
San Francisco Examiner
Gulker moved to San Francisco after the Herald-Examiner closed in 1989, and joined the San Francisco Examiner, where he initially served as picture editor and led the photography staff's transition from film to digital cameras. His work made possible an all-Macintosh-produced edition of The Examiner after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake led to a power shutdown that idled the newspaper's publishing system.Turning the Examiner into a "digital laboratory," he converted the newspaper from black and white to color by implementing a production system of his own design that used Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
es to do color separations and made The Examiner the first major American daily to switch to full-color production using desktop technology, with the first colored front page printed in January 1990. Gulker's "'hacked-together' color calibration system allowed the Examiner to incorporate color for less than it cost other papers," making him "a leader in developing in-house capabilities to use color electronic images daily on deadline."
Gulker's work, which redefined "the state of the art in editorial production methods among print-on-paper media," was driven by necessity. The Examiner, having recently switched from on-site letterpress equipment to a new flexographic
Flexography
Flexography is a form of printing process which utilizes a flexible relief plate. It is basically an updated version of letterpress that can be used for printing on almost any type of substrate including plastic, metallic films, cellophane, and paper...
press, wanted to use the new printing plant's color capability. However, under the joint operating agreement between the Examiner and its local rival, the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, any changes to the production facility, such as introducing color, would have required the consent of both parties to the agreement, and the Chronicle wasn't interested. To produce color for the new press, the Examiner therefore had to handle it in the newsroom.
Gulker became director of development in November 1992.
In 1994, Gulker's editorial workflow system, dubbed the "virtual newsroom", was demonstrated at both Seybold shows
Seybold Seminars
Seybold Seminars was a leading seminar and "the premier trade show for the desktop publishing and pre-press industry." It was founded in 1981 by Jonathan Seybold, son of the printing innovator John W...
and supported the creation of "a real Internet newspaper that used the 'Net throughout the process from story and photo solicitation to delivery." The system provided the publishing infrastructure for The Gate, the online newspaper jointly operated by the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, which made its precipitous debut on November 3, 1994 and came to be officially launched on 5 April 1995.
Electric Examiner and the strike of 1994
In 1994, as "a staff of one" and encouraged by the owner of The Examiner, William Randolph Hearst IIIWilliam Randolph Hearst III
William Randolph Hearst III became president of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation in early 2003. Son of William Randolph Hearst, Jr...
, Gulker came to run a pilot project called The Electric Examiner, which routed wire-service stories to the Web. Gulker wanted to expand this "prototype of a future Web site" to distributing the actual reporting produced at the Examiner but was frustrated in this ambition, as the Examiner was bound by a joint operating agreement with its local rival, the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, and could not move on its own when it came to venturing into new distribution modes. When Gulker's project was previewed in August 1994 under the name The Gate as a joint operation between the two newspapers, it was judged the "furthest ahead" among efforts to bring newspapers online.
The Electric Examiner became a focus of attention in the first two weeks of November 1994, when San Francisco's two major newspapers were hit by a strike
San Francisco newspaper strike of 1994
The San Francisco Newspaper Strike of 1994 was a labor dispute called by the Newspaper Guild in November 1994. Employees of San Francisco's two major daily newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner walked off the job for eleven days....
in which some 2,600 journalists, editors, lorry drivers, press operators and paper handlers walked off their jobs. Gulker did not join them. He sided with management and set to work launching The Gate ahead of its scheduled debut in late November by modifying his system so that the Electric Examiner would now appear daily on The Gate. For the duration of the strike, Gulker's operation, which remained "heavily dependent on wire-service stories" for lack of contributing journalists and editors, was the official online version of San Francisco's two largest newspapers. On one day during the strike, according to Gulker, "the Examiner delivered 80,000 print editions, while its Web site recorded 93,038 accesses." Gulker was aware of the shortcomings of his project but hoped it would blaze a trail for online journalism after the strike, "when the full resources of the paper are available again."
Within two days, the striking journalists set up their own online newspaper, the San Francisco Free Press, and competed with The Gate as "the soul of the Examiner and the Chronicle." Led by the Examiners associate editor Bruce Koon and former SF Weekly editor Marcelo Rodriguez, they operated from a makeshift newsroom using their own hardware and a local ISP for rented server space. The strike lasted 11 days and its competition between two online newspapers has been hailed as "a milestone for online news."
Apple
Gulker left The Examiner a few months after the strike and, reputed as an "Internet publishing guru," accepted an executive position at Apple Inc. to "promote the Mac as the ideal publishing platform for the Internet." At Apple, Gulker first came to manage a new group called Publishing and Media Markets, then oversaw strategic relations for the company's Design and Publishing Markets group, and as "Apple's design and publishing guru" made frequent appearances as a speaker and panelist at publishing-oriented conferences. As Apple's publishing business development manager he advocated the use of intranetIntranet
An intranet is a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to securely share any part of an organization's information or network operating system within that organization. The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and instead refers to a network...
s for prepress
Prepress
Prepress is the term used in the printing and publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing...
productivity gains.
Blogging pioneer and columnist
Gulker's personal site Gulker.com has been online since early 1995. The "news page" on Gulker.com, which launched in May 1997, was modeled after Dave WinerDave Winer
Dave Winer is an American software developer, entrepreneur and writer in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting...
's Scripting News and ran on Winer's Frontier publishing software. Gulker, anticipating the work of Jorn Barger
Jorn Barger
Jorn Barger is an American blogger, best known as editor of Robot Wisdom, an influential early weblog. Barger coined the term weblog to describe the process of "logging the web" as he surfed...
, was the first to propose a network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
of blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
gers and pioneered two of the most effective means through which blogging emerged as a social medium, the blogroll and link attribution.
From 1997 until 2003, Gulker contributed his column "The View from Silicon Valley" to the weekly technology supplement of the British newspaper The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, in which he distinguished himself through "sharp wit and literary ability".
Startup advisor, Adobe Systems
Leaving Apple in 1999, Gulker became founder, senior manager or advisor to several startups. In September 1999, he joined the web development company Montclare Technologies as VP of marketing, and in 2001 he became marketing vice president of RealTimeImage, a company specializing in high resolution streaming imaging.From 2004 to 2007, Gulker was product manager for the Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software developed by Adobe Systems to view, create, manipulate, print and manage files in Portable Document Format . All members of the family, except Adobe Reader , are commercial software, while the latter is available as freeware and can be downloaded...
family at Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
.
Cancer patient
Gulker was diagnosed with an inoperable malignant gliomaGlioma
A glioma is a type of tumor that starts in the brain or spine. It is called a glioma because it arises from glial cells. The most common site of gliomas is the brain.-By type of cell:...
brain tumor in October 2006. In his final years, despite his advancing paralysis, he traveled to France, took a tour of the American South, visited friends and shared his experiences as a cancer patient via his blog. Deciding against "heroic end-of-life measures" he opted for palliative care rather than continued treatment.
In July 2010, his oncologist
Oncology
Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with cancer...
informed him that he had only a few months to live. Gulker died peacefully at his home on October 27, 2010, aged 59. He was survived by his wife of 29 years, Linda Hubbard Gulker.