One operated in the 1860s;[2] another was started in 1890 by West-Indies-born Oxford-educated newspaper editor Robert Charles O'Harra Benjamin and his business manager partner L. B. Stephens.

Alfred wrote the column "Waves from the Left", and he responded to the first hate crime legislation passing in California by writing, "The days are gone when we can be taken for granted.

[11] Beardemphl had earlier written a column—"From the Left"—for the Bay Area Reporter, a gay community newspaper founded in 1971 by Bob Ross.

Managing Editor Gary Schwiekhart wrote that Beardemphl and Ross, both accomplished chefs, "deeply despised one another, both journalistically and culinarily, and frequently used their newspapers to launch vicious personal attacks" on each other.

Historian Rodger Streitmatter in Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America, writes that this tasteless headline was indicative of the Bay Area gay press's failure to call attention to the epidemic even after it was identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,[13] though Bobbi Campbell had started a regular column in the Sentinel about AIDS a few months earlier.

[17] As a young man, Murphy worked as a cub reporter for the Richmond Independent, the Berkeley Daily Gazette and the San Francisco Chronicle before branching out into editing and advertising.

[19] On June 6, 2011, SFAppeal.com reported that Thomas hurried left a paid staged political promoting re-election of progressive Mayor Ed Lee: "Michael Petrelis stumbled upon political consultant Enrique Pearce of Left Coast Communications and one of his staffers outside the grocery co-op's 13th Street entrance, where Pearce and Luke Thomas — publisher of news website Fog City Journal and a freelance photographer — were documenting an "apparently homeless" man holding the aforementioned sign begging Ed Lee to run, according to Petrelis's blog.

As of 2012, Murphy's emphysema remained constant at 30% breathing capacity loss under treatment by San Francisco Dr. Gary Apter.

In March 2011, the San Francisco Police Department revoked the press passes of a number of independent online news outlets including the Sentinel.

Josh Wolf wrote that the department's policy indicated the passes were for reporters who "regularly cover fires and breaking police news".