Steve McNamara was part-owner of The Ark, longtime owner of Pacific Sun

Steve McNamara, a Marin journalism mainstay who once owned a minority stake in The Ark and also owned and published the Pacific Sun alternative weekly, died of natural causes Nov. 24 at his home in Mill Valley. He was 91.

McNamara joined The Ark’s ownership team in 1987 as a minority partner alongside former Ark owners Marilyn Kessler and Barbara Gnoss. The three purchased the newspaper from Tiburon resident James McClatchy, a principal in the McClatchy newspaper group, as the family looked to divest from its local offerings to focus on larger, metropolitan publications.

Belvedere resident George Gnoss, who was married to Barbara until her death in 2009, said McNamara was “always a really upbeat and creative person” who proved to be “a helpful partner at the outset” of Kessler and Gnoss’ tenure as owners.

“At the time, Steve really gave them ‘brave pills’ to tell them they could make this work,” George Gnoss said Dec. 9.

The Ark printed at McNamara’s Mill Valley facility, Marin Sun Printing, where the Pacific Sun also printed. McNamara owned 20% of The Ark and sold his stake to Gnoss and Kessler in 1999. George Gnoss sold his and Barbara’s stake in 2010, while Kessler sold her share in 2011.

McNamara earned greater recognition in Marin as the Pacific Sun’s publisher and owner across a 38-year tenure from 1966 to 2004, when he sold the newspaper to Embarcadero Media; it’s now owned by Weeklys, publisher of the North Bay Bohemian, East Bay Express and others.

Ten months after McNamara assumed ownership of Pacific Sun, the newspaper won a first-place award from the San Francisco Press Club, the Princeton Alumni Weekly wrote in 2017, adding that “McNamara turned the paper around by emphasizing good writing.”

Pacific Sun published the first passages of author Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of The City,” then known as “The Serial.” Future U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, also worked as a reporter for Pacific Sun in the early 1970s.

McNamara founded and served as the first president of the National Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, now known as AAN Publishers. He taught at San Francisco State University and, after selling the Pacific Sun, advised incarcerated journalists at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center on producing the San Quentin News.

Stephen McNamara was born July 9, 1934, in Chicago to Susan Deul and book publisher R.C. McNamara Jr., the couple’s only child. He grew up in Urbana, Illinois, with his mother and stepfather Charles Shattuck, a professor whose academic work focused on the works of William Shakespeare. His mother and stepfather had two daughters. His father had three additional children, two sons and a daughter.

McNamara married three times, his first two marriages ending in divorce. He met his third wife, marriage and family therapist Kay Copeland McNamara, in 1976. The couple remained together until McNamara’s death.

He had three children with his first wife, Hanne Mogenson Petterson of Denmark, and three children with his third wife, one of whom was adopted.

McNamara attended Princeton University, which his father, grandfather and uncle also attended. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history with a minor in American studies in 1955.

McNamara initially pursued a career as a diplomat but abandoned those plans after interviewing a family friend in the diplomatic corps, which reminded him of an “upper-crusty” culture he saw in college, he told the Princeton Alumni Weekly in 2017.

He pivoted to journalism despite having no experience as a reporter. He first worked at the Winston-Salem Journal and its afternoon paper, the Twin City Sentinel, in North Carolina. He then joined the Miami Herald and Car & Driver magazine, where he wrote a profile piece on Enzo Ferrari, the luxury sports car’s namesake founder. He eventually joined the San Francisco Examiner in 1960, where he became the publication’s Sunday magazine editor, his alma mater’s publication reported.

During a 2014 oral history with the Mill Valley Public Library, McNamara said he felt he excelled at explanatory writing.

“There are a lot of people who can do the bells and whistles better than I can, and I admire them,” McNamara said in 2014. “But if you really want to read a story in which you understand what has happened, I do that well.”

McNamara lived in Mill Valley from 1963 until his death. He discovered the Pacific Sun while looking for someone to publish a four-page leaflet to distribute for a school-bond issue. Merrill and Joann Grohman founded the newspaper in 1963 in Stinson Beach.

“The Pacific Sun had its heart in the right place — championing education, the environment, the arts,” he said in 2017. “But it was a pretty ratty-looking newspaper.”

He appreciated the newspaper as a “liberal paper that has a nice voice to it,” he recalled in 2014, akin to the Village Voice in New York.

McNamara bought the newspaper from the Grohmans in 1966. By the end of the decade, he relocated the Pacific Sun’s offices from San Rafael to Mill Valley, where it remained during his ownership.

Alex Horvath, a former Pacific Sun columnist in the mid-1990s, wrote in a comment on the Pacific Sun’s website that he had been a fan of McNamara since he was a teenager.

“Working at The Sun under Steve’s guidance made me a better writer and led to other professional writing jobs,” Horvath wrote. “He taught me how to look for ‘the dog in the room,’ and other things that add color to a story.”

By the end of his ownership, McNamara increased the Pacific Sun’s circulation from 1,800 to 36,000, the Princeton Alumni Weekly reported. The newspaper today remains the longest-running alternative weekly in the nation.

McNamara became an adviser to the San Quentin News in 2008, a role he maintained through 2015. He oversaw the newspaper’s website debut and distribution to all 35 prisons in California.

“We are presenting an opportunity to work in a certain environment,” McNamara said in 2017 of his approach with the San Quentin News, “an active, mixed-race environment with deadlines, with decision-making power and with individual and collective responsibility.”

The Society of Professional Journalists awarded the San Quentin News its James Madison Freedom of Information Award in 2014 under McNamara’s advising.

McNamara often praised the San Quentin reporters.

“Once some friends of mine were starting a men’s group and invited me to join,” McNamara told the Princeton publication. “I have one,” he told his friends, referring to the San Quentin reporters. “And they’re way more interesting.”

He is survived by his wife; children Lise, Natalie, Kevin, Chris, Morgan and Marisa; eight grandchildren; and a sister, Kate Green.

A memorial service is planned for 2 p.m. Aug. 6, 2026, at The Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley.

Reach Tiburon reporter Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.

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