Short answers, pulled from the story.
The San Francisco Chronicle was founded on the 16th of January 1865, as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The paper was funded with a borrowed $20 gold piece. It adopted its current name on the 15th of August 1869.
The San Francisco Chronicle is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which purchased it from the de Young family on the 27th of July 2000, for $660 million. Hearst is the sole owner of the only major daily paper covering the city and county of San Francisco.
SFGate was launched on the 3rd of November 1994, as the San Francisco Chronicle's website and is considered the first large-market newspaper website in the world. It was co-founded by Allen Weiner and John Coate. Since 2019, SFGate and the Chronicle's separate site SFChronicle.com have operated as two independent entities.
The Little Man is a cartoon figure seated in a movie theater chair used by the Chronicle's film section to rate movies. The figure's posture indicates the rating, ranging from jumping and applauding wildly to being gone from his seat entirely. Roger Ebert described it in 2008 as the only rating system that makes any sense.
Chronicle reporter Paul Avery pursued the Zodiac Killer story during the killer's murder spree in the late 1960s. The self-named Zodiac Killer sent cryptograms in three sections to the Chronicle and two other papers. This investigative work took place under editor Scott Newhall, who led the paper between World War II and 1971.
In the summer of 1965, the Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner entered a Joint Operating Agreement under which the Chronicle became the sole morning daily and the Examiner shifted to afternoon publication. Revenue was split equally between the two papers despite the Chronicle having four times the Examiner's circulation, effectively subsidizing its rival until 2000.