But Tony, those who knew him said, was too nice and well mannered for this kind of bare-knuckle battle. So when he finally followed his father into newspapers, he went in on the business side, starting out as circulation manager of the Newhall Signal, a small country newspaper, before graduating to the big-city Chronicle.<\/p>\n
Once there, in the late 1980s, he rose to the position of associate publisher and was assigned to be management liaison to the powerful newspaper guild. It was an adversarial situation, but Newhall had been in the Peace Corps. He approached union relations with the modesty and kindness with which he approached everything else. His relationship with Doug Cuthbertson, executive officer of the guild, was immediately defused when the two natural adversaries realized they had been born on the same day, March 18, 1941.<\/p>\n
“He was a good guy,” Cuthbertson said. “Among the management people I dealt with over the 40 years that I was there, he was one of the most thoroughly pleasant.”<\/p>\n
![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/san_francisco_chronicle_hearst_178\/ef2cef539ad68d5530a5eaf6f050fddb.jpg\"\/)
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Scott Newhall pours silver dollars while winners show off a golden medallion at a 1959 treasure hunt he devised to boost circulation for the San Francisco Chronicle. (Barney Peterson\/S.F. Chronicle)<\/p>\n
Newhall was buttoned-down, but he was also a friend to the sometimes more rumpled rank and file. Longtime reporter and union stalwart Steve Rubenstein, known for his casual attire, used to play chess with him in the break room. Newhall also played with longtime chess editor George Koltanowski and helped organize chess events and promotions sponsored by the Chronicle.<\/p>\n
“Tony was devoted to the Chronicle and everyone who worked there or who bought a copy. He seemed to know every subscriber personally,” Rubenstein said. “Tony was warm, gracious, kind and – like his legendary father – the best friend the Chronicle ever had.”<\/p>\n
Newhall never talked about himself or threw around the Newhall name at the Chronicle. He never let on that he had a side hobby teaching ballroom dancing on cruise ships that sailed to Alaska and Mexico, and he never talked about his collection of concert posters from the Fillmore Auditorium. He had originals from the first 67 shows at the Fillmore, a collection so rare that it has been acquired for the permanent collection of the Huntington Library in San Marino (Los Angeles County).<\/p>\n
Newhall left the Chronicle in the late 1990s, just before the heirs of Chronicle founders M.H. and Charles de Young put the whole family operation of newspapers and television stations up for sale. Newhall moved home to the Santa Clarita Valley in northern Los Angeles County.<\/p>\n
There, he helped his wife, Reena Newhall, run Reena’s Dance studio, and another retail venture, A Chorus Line Dancewear and Costumes, in a shopping center they owned and developed.<\/p>\n
Tony had taken a fall six months ago and, suffering from dementia, had to be moved from the family home to assisted living in Newhall. Reena, his wife of 44 years, was with her husband when he died. “He just went,” she said. “He just stopped breathing.”<\/p>\n
“He was very involved in nonprofits and started a lot of things that are still going on,” Reena said. “He loved his community, and he really helped his charities right until the end. He just wanted to do the best that he could do for the people.”<\/p>\n
Anthony Newhall was born in Palo Alto. His great-great-grandfather, Henry Mayo Newhall, had been involved in the gold rush and used a small fortune made in San Francisco to found his own town, 25 miles north of Los Angeles in 1896.<\/p>\n
Tony and his twin brother, Jon, were raised on Grizzly Peak in the Berkeley hills. He attended Cragmont Elementary School and Garfield Junior High, now Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.<\/p>\n
He then went east to prep school at Middlesex in Concord, Mass. After graduating in 1959, he enrolled at Stanford but took his sophomore year off to get some work experience, which included a stint as a copy boy at the Chronicle, which put him in the editorial department run by his father.<\/p>\n
He returned to Stanford to earn his bachelor’s degree in economics in 1964. Inspired by a campus recruitment speech by Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy in-law who headed the Peace Corps, he joined and was assigned to a cooperative program in Peru. First he was sent to Cal State Los Angeles for a Spanish immersion program in Peruvian history and culture. Once overseas he was stationed in Lima and traveled to the northern provinces to set up cooperative credit unions.<\/p>\n
He returned in 1966 and entered the two-year program to earn a master’s in business administration at Stanford. He lasted only one year before he was recruited again, this time by a cousin who ran an import-export business in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
After starting out in circulation at the Newhall Signal, Tony quickly rose to general manager, and in 1977 he was named publisher. He was also active in local charities, both at the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital Foundation and the Newhall Boys & Girls Club. He launched an auction to benefit the Boys & Girls Club that became a major social event in the community. He was involved in the United Way, the local historical society and just about every other charitable organization that asked him.<\/p>\n
He was named Boys & Girls Club Man of the Year in 1972 and 1980, and Santa Clarita Valley Man of the Year in 1985.<\/p>\n
He had name recognition in Newhall that was unrivaled, but he was also shy. In 1975, he enrolled in a beginning ballroom dancing class taught by Maureen Gladbach, at her dance school in Santa Clarita. Group lessons led to private lessons with Gladbach, who goes by Reena.<\/p>\n
![\"Tony](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/san_francisco_chronicle_hearst_178\/5bdd673bfcbd35aab23bb11d7e436d65.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Tony and Reena Newhall, shown on a cruise in 2009, taught ballroom dancing on cruise lines. (Courtesy of the Newhall family)<\/p>\n
“He was good at it, and he started doing exercises to make him better at it,” she said. Soon the publisher of the Newhall Signal was a ballroom dance instructor himself, teaching group sessions in local hotels such as the Holiday Inn. He even expanded his repertoire of dances to disco, which was taught in the evenings under a mirror ball.<\/p>\n
“We did Latin styles, we did waltzes, we did line dances,” she said. “He was terrific and very personal. He never held a grudge against anybody. He was always nice.”<\/p>\n
They were married in 1982, with a reception on the Royal Viking Star, docked in Los Angeles. Reena had three children, Eric, Beth and Jana, whom Newhall helped raise. Their daughter, Lindsey, was born in 1983.<\/p>\n
By the early 1980s the couple were on the entertainment staff of Delta Cruise Lines, teaching dance and leading bingo, charades and all forms of onboard entertainment on weeklong cruises from Los Angeles to Vancouver.<\/p>\n
In 1989, the Newhall family sold the Newhall Signal after 30 years of ownership. That year he joined the San Francisco Chronicle. His father, who had long since retired, died in 1992<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tony rented an apartment with a view of the bay and commuted from Santa Clarita, where he stayed active in his charities and in his wife’s dance school. In addition to his administrative and accounting duties at the Chronicle, Newhall was elected to the board of the statewide California Newspaper Publishers Association, headquartered in Sacramento, and was elected its president in 1986. He was also given the Top Achievement Award from the California Press Association in 2000.<\/p>\n “He was a consummate gentleman,” said Matt Wilson, former executive vice president of news and associate publisher of the Chronicle. “His father, Scott, was this colorful commanding guy, and Tony was this very sweet ‘aw shucks’ fellow. He was extremely competent and got things done in a quiet way.”<\/p>\n Subscribe<\/p>\n There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25\u00a2.<\/a><\/p>\n