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8.B. - Page 33 of 66 William Kostura, Historic Resource Evaluation for 970 Edgewood Road correspondent for the San Francisco Bulletin newspaper. After graduation in 1925 he worked at various non journalism jobs, including at the Pacific Coast Steel Company, the Western Meat packing plant in South San Francisco, and for a local butcher. His first journalism job, for the San Francisco Examiner, lasted two weeks before he was fired. He then worked for the South San Francisco Journal — later called the Enterprise and was transferred to the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian to gain experience in advertising. Next, in 1937, he went to work for his long-time employer, the Redwood City Tribune, as a courthouse reporter. He assembled the extra bits of news items that did not fit into his regular stories into a daily column, "Under the Courthouse Dome." Over a period of 32 years he wrote about 7,000 of these columns. After time spent in the U. S. Army just before World War II, and in the U. S. Coast Guard Temporary Reserve during the war, he returned to the Tribune in 1945, initially as editor and publisher. He soon stepped down as editor but remained the publisher until he retired in 1969, at age 65. He sometimes continued to cover local events as a reporter. A photographer at the newspaper, Reginald McGovern, said of him, "He was a newspaperman when he was a publisher. Most of them are businessmen." His focus was on local news, but over time it broadened to include county -wide and regional issues. Michael Svanevik and Shirley Burgett wrote "reading Spangler's column became a way of life in Redwood City where four out of five families subscribed to the Tribune. He reported on what was happening, was a master at explaining school finance and delighted in including items that forced members of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors into rare positions of candor." (Svanevik and Burgett, 1987) In one of his obituaries a reporter wrote that his employees "remembered him as a demanding boss whose personal integrity and dedication to local news made the paper the benchmark for local coverage. `Reporters there knew that they better have the story right and cover all the bases.... He was a watchdog and he looked at the paper every day. If there was something that he felt wasn't right, we all heard about it."' (Cunningham, 1997) He was registered as a Republican. According to one newspaper article (Svanevik and Burgett, 1987), although he "always claimed to be a Conservative," in his newspaper he promoted or espoused many causes that are considered liberal. Among them: In 1965 he initiated an editorial program that promoted the creation of the Bay Area Pollution Control District; the district was formed in 1966. As an advocate of free speech and a free press, he was a founding member of the California First Amendment Committee, later known as the California First Amendment Coalition, and won its First Amendment Award. 491