POLITICIANS LINE UP TO PLAY MONOPOLY IN SAN FRANCISCO

Outcry against likely shutdown of Examiner rings hollow, at best

"Monopoly" is a word that's been kicked around a lot lately.

We heard it repeatedly during the antitrust trial of Microsoft; last week's proposed merger of America Online and Time Warner caused more than a few grumblings about the potential for a monopoly in the Internet broadband delivery arena (wherein Time Warner's cable television interests link up with AOL to offer high-speed access not to the Internet, but to AOL alone).

Nonetheless, the word "monopoly" is probably being bandied about the San Francisco Bay Area more than anywhere else in the country. It all stems from the Aug. 6 announcement that the Hearst Corp. would acquire the San Francisco Chronicle and, assuming no "qualified" buyer for Hearst's flagship Examiner was found, would merge the two dailies (see NewsInc., Aug. 30, 1999).

In inaugural statements, the re-elected San Francisco mayor and district attorney both voiced strong concerns about the sale. The president of the board of supervisors (the city council) – a failed mayoral candidate – also voiced concern and said he planned to hold hearings. Mayor Willie Brown went so far as to say that he'd form an exploratory committee to find investors to buy the long-suffering afternoon paper.

Backing up these politicians' concerns was the Jan. 11 filing in U.S. District Court of a suit to block the sale. The resulting monopoly, claims the suit, would violate federal antitrust laws.

The kicker to this is that the suit was filed by Clint Reilly, a political consultant who ran for mayor last fall as well (he spent $4 million and came in fourth). If there is such a thing as a "political spectrum" in San Francisco (where a "conservative" would be considered a "liberal" anywhere else in the country), the statements and the lawsuit, taken together, represent a united political front against shutting down the Examiner.

Reilly's suit says he would be harmed as a "subscriber to and potential advertiser in" the two newspapers if the Examiner were to close. It also alleges that if implemented, Hearst's purchase of the Chronicle "will deprive newspaper readers, including the plaintiff, of free and open competition in the sale of daily newspapers and their differing editorial and reportorial voices."

What's interesting is that all these politicians hate the Examiner. Reilly, in fact, got into a scuffle with the paper's executive editor a few years back, broke his ankle and sued (it was settled out of court). Brown has said in the past the Examiner was "not worth using as toilet paper" and that he looked forward to the day it no longer existed. The others have had their feelings bruised by the daily (as they should – that's the job of newspapers).

Concern for the Examiner as an entity among these politicians is nil; the ability to cause the Hearst Corp. and Examiner executives and reporters pain is the primary motivation for their maneuvers. Over the years, the various publishers and editors of the Examiner have made life miserable for San Francisco politicians. And now, the tables have turned.

The monopoly these politicians cry about exists only in their minds. Yes, there would be only one daily newspaper in San Francisco, and as a longtime former resident – and longtime Examiner employee – I would find that sad. But the plain economic truth is that there are only a few cities in America today that can support more than one daily. San Francisco isn't one of them.

In the San Francisco Yellow Pages under the heading "newspapers" there are five columns of listings, and once we look beyond the confines of the city limits, there are two dozen dailies serving the Bay Area. There is robust nightly TV news on five stations and a 24-hour all-news cable TV station.

If they're so concerned about multiple voices, San Francisco politicians should be looking at how papers elsewhere tackle the problem (probed by Senior Editor Pete Wetmore inside) and pressuring Hearst to adopt something similar.

The only "monopoly" in San Francisco is the politicians' monopoly on hypocrisy.

– David M. Cole

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From NEWSINC., Jan. 17, 2000, Copyright © 2000, The Cole Group. All Rights Reserved.