San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
‘She was the heart of our newsroom’
Danielle Mollette-Parks, who brought a spirit of invention, a keen visual sense and an empathetic warmth to her job as creative director at the San Francisco Chronicle, has died at age 51. The cause was metastatic breast cancer, said her husband, Tim Mollette-Parks, who was at her side when she died early Monday, Dec. 18, in their Oakland home.
“She was the heart of our newsroom,” said Emilio GarciaRuiz, Chronicle editor in chief. “She made us more collaborative and more supportive. She was constantly pushing beyond the ordinary to try to get to the extraordinary.”
“She was a master class in how to be a well-rounded journalist and do it with a love for telling stories and making sure that we give our best to our readers,” said Nicole Frugé, Chronicle director of visuals.
Mollette-Parks expressed her artistry through her job and the many creative hobbies in which she immersed herself, including baking, pottery and watercolors. She had a playful side, dressing her terrier mix Woody (named after Woody Guthrie) in colorful sweaters, amusing colleagues with droll asides and amassing images of polar bears. Amid the demands of a newsroom with multiple deadlines and clashing personalities, she was an oasis of serenity.
In a testament to MolletteParks’ level-headed calm, the Chronicle selected her as the management representative in contract negotiations with the newspaper guild, which could be contentious.
“Through all the meetings and bargaining discussions, she was calm, she was collected, she never had a harsh word,” said graphic designer Todd Trumbull, who sat on the other side of the table as a union representative. “Never once was there a complaint, never did she say she couldn’t make it. She was a real trouper.”
Mollette-Parks was also a literal trouper.
She grew up as a “carnival kid,” moving from town to town throughout the Midwest in the summer with her parents, who ran midway games and food concessions for Wade Shows, a traveling carnival. During the offseason, the family lived in Gibsonton, Fla., a Tampa suburb known as a winter home for traveling show people.
The fairs started in April or May, so Mollette-Parks would have to finish her school year by living with different relatives or family friends — often having to relocate, said Tim MolletteParks.
Despite that peripatetic life, she maintained a straight-A average.
Although being separated from her parents and having to adapt to new environments was tricky, it helped her develop independence and resilience, Tim Mollette-Parks said. “She appreciated her parents’ work ethic and that they were doing what they had to do.”
Jessica Parks, Danielle Mollette-Parks’ younger sister, had the same upbringing, but much later, as she is 13 years younger.
When Parks would stay with friends or family during the end of the school year, “my sister would always come and make sure I was OK, so I had that strong family connection,” she said.
In sixth and seventh grade, Parks lived with her big sister and Tim Mollette-Parks to finish off the school years.
“Danielle was always there for me,” Parks said. “She was in her 20s; she should have been completely carefree. She and Tim could have done anything, but they invited her little sister to live with them.”
After graduating from the University of Miami with degrees in journalism and graphic design, Mollette-Parks embarked on her newspaper career, working in design roles at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Charlotte Observer, where she was special projects director.
Danielle Parks and Tim Mollette met in 1998 at the Observer, where he was a designer. He is now a landscape architect and urban planner.
He was struck by her brilliance, kindness and confidence. “It seemed like she knew who she was,” he said.
The couple moved to Chicago, where she was front-page news editor and designer for the Chicago Tribune, and in 2006 to the
Bay Area, where she was an editor and designer at the Chronicle. In 2020, she was promoted to creative director, a high-level, or masthead, newsroom leadership position in which she supervised the design and user experience of the staff ’s work.
Mollette-Parks guided the Chronicle’s visual presentation during turbulent times for newspapers as they move from a printcentric focus to prioritizing online distribution.
“Danielle was instrumental in pushing designers whose careers had been purely on the printed page (to) transition to digital, which meant they would have to learn some software coding,” GarciaRuiz said. “And that group included Danielle herself. There were those who were reluctant to embrace the new world, but Danielle patiently guided them through.”
As a leader, MolletteParks’ ability “to articulate a vision and trust people to be able to execute it was incredible,” said Alex Fong, Chronicle deputy creative director for design. “She wanted to create the most enveloping, most encompassing experience possible.”
That meant trying to put readers in the shoes of someone being profiled, often a person experiencing trauma or difficult circumstances, so readers would develop a deeper understanding.
For a project in which 36 Chronicle journalists documented a 24-hour period in San Francisco’s homelessness crisis, a running clock helped convey a sense of urgency.
The project was a finalist in the Online News Association’s excellence and innovation in visual storytelling category, and it won an award from the Society for News Design. An article about the Carr Fire in Redding combined videos, photos, graphics and text, bringing “a lot of drama and impact and feeling,” Fong said about the project, which was also a finalist for ONA’s feature category.
Mollette-Parks was also instrumental in the Chronicle’s investigation into how the city of San Francisco places homeless people in dilapidated hotels, serving as project manager and overseeing the design and development team in an executive role. That project was a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year. And she designed the story about a woman on San Francisco streets who was addicted to fentanyl, which was a Pulitzer finalist for Gabrielle Lurie’s photographs.
On the lighter side, Mollette-Parks commissioned a set of whimsical illustrations for a piece about readers voting for San Francisco’s (unofficial) official animal.
“Danielle was a creative engine, not only bringing abundant skill and great ideas but artistic sensibility and a gift for collaboration,” said Demian Bulwa, Chronicle director of news. “She made everybody better, and she was a driving force in our most ambitious work. Further, she just really cared. She didn’t just want to publish a great story but wanted to force change, often in how we treat the most vulnerable people — people without homes, people struggling with drug addiction, people facing discrimination.”
Writers also said she helped make their work sing.
“Your story was just a story until Danielle brought it to life,” said Matthias Gafni, a Chronicle reporter. “Her touches made your words and photos move and breathe. She was the driving force, behind the scenes, for all our major projects. She was the magic.”
Even while holding down increasingly responsible positions, Mollette-Parks was battling cancer. She was diagnosed in June 2017 with Stage 4 breast cancer that had metastasized to her bones. From then on, she was almost continuously receiving chemotherapy, immunotherapy or hormone therapy, Tim MolletteParks said.
“All the things that she did while she was in treatment were really staggering,” he said. “She did some of the work she was the most proud of in her whole career during that time. We went to Greece. She went to Croatia. We bought a little bungalow in East Oakland. All this living kept happening.”
Mollette-Parks was phenomenal at creating with her hands, her husband said. She was an accomplished potter and also made items in fused glass. The couple shared a love of doing plein air watercolors and spent a week every year in Mendocino painting and hiking together.
Her striking photos of the couple’s travels decorate their home, while the backyard is filled with plants she grew in white terra-cotta pots inspired by ones she saw in Greece.
She was also “an incredible cook,” Tim Mollette-Parks said. She spent six months apprenticed to a Berkeley pastry chef, rising at 4 a.m. daily to make macarons and pie crusts, then showering off the flour and taking BART to her job at the Chronicle.
Her love of color, patterns and textures was reflected in her vivid, stylish wardrobe. She lost her hair several times during chemo but took pleasure in seeking out just the right hats, her husband said.
Mollette-Parks delighted in uncovering fun activities to share with loved ones, her sister said. “She was great at finding little hidden gems that people visiting her would appreciate,” Parks said, recounting the many adventures her sister organized for her nephew Robert, Parks’ 7-year-old son.
The last time Robert saw his aunt, she bought him a blue stuffed macaw during a trip to the zoo.
“That has not left his sight except for going to school the last few days,” Parks said. “He talks to it, says he’s talking to Aunt Danny about his days, getting ready for Christmas, asking her to look after Uncle Tim because he’s worried about him.”
Music was another passion for Danielle and Tim Mollette-Parks. Singersongwriter David Childers, whom the couple saw on their first date, later played at their wedding. The couple made an annual pilgrimage to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park.
The pair exchanged early Christmas gifts this year.
Like many avid Oakland A’s fans, she had felt betrayed by the team decamping to Las Vegas, so Mollette-Parks got her husband an Oakland Ballers cap to commemorate the city’s new minorleague team.
He bought her Dolly Parton’s new album, “Rockstar,” and she listened to the joyous songs over and over in her final days.
“Danielle was a rock star,” her husband said.
In addition to her husband, sister and nephew, Mollette-Parks is survived by her mother, Sharon Parks.