(11-22) 04:00 PDT San Francisco -- The afternoon San Francisco Examiner, the Monarch of the Dailies and the world's first Hearst newspaper, passed into history yesterday. The final copy of the last Hearst Examiner came off the presses at exactly 3:20 p.m. Examiner Executive Editor Phil Bronstein picked up the final, final Examiner, took a look and handed it to Managing Editor Sharon Rosenhause. The headline in type 2 1/2 inches high said, "Goodbye!"

It seemed that nearly half the Examiner's editorial staff had crowded into the printing plant at Cesar Chavez Street near the foot of Potrero Hill to watch for the last newspaper. All of them were somber, and some were in tears.

"It was an unseemly and untimely death," said Bronstein later. "With a lot of proud people watching. Now," he said, "we move on into the new world."

The Examiner will be reborn today as a morning paper under the ownership of San Francisco's Fang family. The Fangs obtained the Examiner's name, its archives, 35 delivery trucks and a subsidy of $66 million as part of the Hearst corporation's acquisition of The Chronicle.

The staff of the former Examiner will come to work for The Chronicle. Bronstein will be executive editor of The Chronicle.

A TRADITION DIES

Today may be a new day, but yesterday felt very much like the end of an era and the death of a long and proud tradition.

The paper itself was 135 years old and had been the Hearst flagship for 113 years. In its glory days, the Examiner saw itself as the most powerful paper in California, and in its twilight years, as a scrappy underdog, quicker and better than the bigger morning Chronicle. "We always thought of ourselves as Avis to the Chronicle's Hertz," said photographer Kim Komenich, who won the Examiner's last Pulitzer Prize for his pictures of the Philippine revolution in 1987.

Bronstein, then a reporter, was his partner on the story, and the two men hugged each other yesterday.

Komenich was particularly concerned about the Examiner archives, which will go to the new owners with all its pictures. "For a a lot of us these photographs are our life's work. For a lot of us, it's sad."

Sadness was the order of the day in the Examiner's city room, which is dominated by a black wall and a huge mural of the Hearst eagle. The eagle symbol was taken down from the Examiner building last week.

But for columnist Rob Morse, the eagle is a part of life -- he has an Examiner eagle tattooed on his left leg. "Ted Fang (the publisher of the new Examiner) owns my left leg now," Morse said. "That's the problem." Morse, a fierce defender of his old paper, says he's "looking forward" to writing a column for The Chronicle. "Pending the recount," he said.

OH, THE GOOD OLD DAYS

To none's surprise, there was a lot of talk about the good old days on the final day of the old Examiner. Reporter Malcolm Glover, who is the senior reporter on any Bay Area daily, remembered the day when he was hired by William Randolph Hearst himself, back in 1943.

"At the tender age of 16, I was a photographer," he said.

That was a mere 57 years ago. Later, after Navy service, Glover became a reporter, and now he is the dean of the business.

"I learned more just sitting by this guy than I ever learned in college, "said reporter Jim Herron Zamora.

One of the things he learned was that the Examiner once had immense power in San Francisco. "I remember one day when the head copy boy, Walt Addiego, went up to Bill Wren, the managing editor.

" 'There's a gentleman here to see you,' he said.

'Yeah?' said Wren 'Who is it?'

'It's Mayor Elmer Robinson,' said Addiego.

'Yeah?' said Wren. 'Let him wait.' And he did."

In those days, Glover said, the Roman Catholic archbishop picked the fire chief and the Examiner picked the police chief. "So horse trading," Glover said, "is nothing new."

It all started to go down hill when Wren died, back in the mid '50s, Glover said.

Whatever happened, the Examiner -- an afternoon paper since 1965 -- started losing circulation from a high of over 300,000 in the early '60s to about 97, 000 in the end. They printed 130,000 copies yesterday for the farewell.

PAINFUL PASSING

It was a traumatic farewell at that. "They say the five most traumatic things that can happen to you is to get married, have a baby, lose a parent, change jobs and get a divorce," said columnist Cynthia Robbins. "Today, three of those things happened to us.

"We had the most incredible culture on this paper," she said. "The upstart culture. We had great pride in being the other."

It was not just editorial people who lost something dear. Don Velez was a printer at the old Examiner on Third Street and has worked for the paper for 37 years. "This is something we've had for years, " he said, "and all of a sudden, it's gone now."

Velez is a veteran of the days when the papers were put out with Linotype machines and hot lead instead by computers, as they are now. "We had a lot of pride in our work," he said.

So did the press operators. Al Lombardi, manager of the plant, gave the signal to start the press for the Examiner's four star -- and last edition -- at 2:10 p.m. "I never thought I'd be around to see the end of the Examiner, I'll tell you," he said.

The presses ran for an hour, with the roar that has been a cliche of every newspaper movie ever made. Bronstein stood over the final line, watching the papers come out, his jaw working, saying nothing.

Columnist Stephanie Salter and reporter Christina Koci Hernandez embraced. They were both in tears. The staff gathered around, watching, grim faced. It was exactly like watching someone die.

At 3:20, the last paper came off the press. "That's it," said the foreman. "We're off."

The last deadline had come and gone and the Examiner, the old Ex, was dead.

E-mail Carl Nolte at cnolte@sfchronicle.com.