As Examiner Sale Nears, S.F. Has Mixed Feelings

Just a few weeks ago, the San Francisco Examiner appeared doomed, a struggling newspaper languishing on the sales block. But then, in a surprise transaction defying the trend of monster mergers in the media world, the daily was acquired by an immigrant Chinese family that runs a string of free local papers.

The deal, which could be finalized as soon as today, would make Florence Fang and her three sons among the first Asian Americans to own a major metropolitan daily in the United States.

Many San Franciscans are grateful that the Examiner--flagship of the media empire built by the legendary William Randolph Hearst--has been rescued, keeping this most opinionated and provincial of cities a two-newspaper town. But others wonder: Will the new owners prove a blessing or a curse?

The Fangs are a source of considerable pride for many in the city’s large Asian community, who revel at the notion of an immigrant family taking control of Hearst’s newspaper that a century ago railed against the yellow peril. Boosters of the politically influential Fangs, who count Mayor Willie Brown and Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan among their allies, consider the family astute businesspeople, an immigrant success story fit for 21st century America.

But foes litter the city’s undulating landscape. They contend that the Independent, an advertising-packed, thrice-weekly community paper run by middle son Ted Fang, often engages in a brand of journalistic bombast little seen since the days of Hearst.

While filling a void with solid neighborhood reporting, the paper turns up the heat during political season, critics say, unfairly lashing out at the Fangs’ political enemies. Foes worry that the style will carry over to the new Examiner.

“It’s nice to be carried away with this Cinderella story of the Fang family’s success,” said Doug Comstock, a neighborhood activist. “But what really happened is the wicked stepsister got a foot in the shoe this time. I don’t think it’s a good fit.”

The Fangs could find out as soon as today whether they will go to the dance. A legal effort to block the sale of the rival San Francisco Chronicle to Hearst Corp. is expected to be heard in federal court this afternoon. The Chronicle deal is also expected to close today. If Hearst is thwarted, sale of the Examiner also would collapse.

Ted Fang, 37, said he expects the legal action launched by Clint Reilly, a wealthy San Francisco political consultant who lost a bid to buy the Examiner, to fail. Barring intervention by the U.S. Justice Department, which has been monitoring the Chronicle sale because of antitrust concerns, Ted Fang would assume the role of publisher and the new Examiner would be launched after a four-month transition period.

‘The Old Examiner . . . Isn’t Coming Back’ Big change is inevitable.

“My family, myself, my newspapers, we’ve never been accused of being shy about taking a stand,” Ted Fang said Wednesday. “I don’t think that will change with the Examiner.”

Media watchers welcome the paper’s survival, but are taking a wait-and-see attitude about the journalism.

“The old Examiner is gone and it’s not coming back,” said Felix Gutierrez, executive director of the Freedom Forum Pacific Coast Center, a journalism foundation. “The question is are we better with one newspaper or two?”

San Francisco has been a place where politics and newspapers have always played hard and fought with bare knuckles, but the Fangs could raise the battles to a level not seen in half a century.

“That kind of in-your-face journalism is an old, revered San Francisco tradition,” said Kevin Starr, state librarian and author of several volumes on California’s history. “If the Fangs bring a little of that back to the Examiner, they can create a market.”

Ted Fang said he wants to fill a niche not currently served by the much larger Chronicle, which has a circulation of 465,000 spread across Northern California. “The Chronicle is a regional paper,” he said. “We will be San Francisco’s local daily newspaper.”

He also promises to bring along Warren Hinckle, the one-eyed, swashbuckling columnist who once ran for San Francisco mayor. Fang only half-jokes that Hinckle, who writes a blistering column for the Independent, will be his “director of high jinks and excitement.”

“It’ll be like the Barbary Coast again,” said Joe O’Donoghue, head of the city’s Residential Builders Assn. and a Fang family friend. “They’ll either go to the moon or explode right on the pad. Either way, it’ll be exciting.”

Some foes are betting on the explosion. In court papers, Hearst Corp. said it will underwrite the Fangs with $66 million over three years. But some newspaper analysts say at least $50 million a year will be needed to keep afloat the Examiner, which has a circulation of 105,000. Critics of the sale predict the Fangs will bleed the paper, then either fold or sell out to a conglomerate.

‘Ultimate Dream of an Immigrant Family’

Ted Fang said the family will work hard to return the Examiner to its glory days. “My parents came to this country with $200 in their pockets,” he said. “This is the ultimate dream of an immigrant family, to run a major metropolitan daily.”

His father, John Ta Chuan Fang, came to America in the early 1950s, studying journalism at UC Berkeley then working as publisher of the Young China Daily, a San Francisco-based newspaper supported by the Taiwanese government. He broke away in 1979 to start Asian Week, an English-language paper that now boasts a circulation of more than 44,000.

The elder Fang met his wife, Florence, during a trip to China, and they had three boys in the United States. James, 38, runs Asian Week, is on the Bay Area Rapid Transit board and is married to the daughter of a top Chinese Communist official. Ted built the Independent into the largest free newspaper in the U.S. and runs a string of community papers stretching into the Silicon Valley. Douglas, 35, has a doctorate in computer science and helps run a dot-com start-up.

But the soul of the family since John’s death in 1992 has been Florence Fang. The family matriarch is deeply involved in all decisions. Regal in her bearing, she now lives in a sprawling home in upscale Hillsborough. Friends say she is bright, shrewd and tough.

“The three sons well respect the mother,” said Benny Yee, a longtime family friend. “They work in a very harmonious way.”

Family members say Florence Fang once yelled down a group of tong gang members that sought to extort money soon after the family opened a Chinatown restaurant in the 1980s. The gangsters backed down, said one friend, “because they thought she was crazy or had some powerful friends in government.”

Indeed, the Fangs have never been short of friends in government. The Independent has regularly backed winning candidates for mayor and supervisor. Ted Fang said the paper picks winners because it is “more in touch with the people of San Francisco.” Others say the Fangs’ brand of advocacy journalism comes into play.

In the 1991 mayoral race, the Independent took after Mayor Art Agnos, publishing a series of Hinckle columns blasting the candidate and then repackaging them as a book that was distributed free throughout the city. During the district attorney race in 1995 the Fangs backed Hallinan and ran countless stories ripping rival Bill Fazio, an assistant district attorney who complained that the paper ran unsubstantiated suggestions that he had mob links.

The paper also stood squarely behind a successful 1997 vote on a new stadium for the 49ers football team. “They gave us no equal time,” said Comstock, who opposed the stadium deal.

“Collectively they’ve done more damage to this town than the Loma Prieta earthquake,” said Barbara Meskunas, a former city housing commissioner who once worked for the Fangs. “The stuff they run can be so one-sided, so polarized, so dirty.”

Independent Known for Personal Attacks

Even friends say the Independent’s stance on issues occasionally seems based on what’s good for the Fangs. “Sometimes their journalistic decisions are made for business reasons,” said O’Donoghue, a longtime ally. “You can’t defend that. It’s just part of reality.”

At times the attacks have been intensely personal. The Independent has for months published a cartoon series penned by Hinckle lampooning Examiner Executive Editor Phil Bronstein and his wife, actress Sharon Stone. It is dubbed “Mr. Sharon Stone.”

“It’s all part of the way people enjoy themselves around here,” said Bronstein, who is expected to move with most of his staff to the Chronicle. “It can be very bombastic and very rough. If you want to be part of it, you have to accept it.”

Others say the Fangs various causes are influenced by Jack Davis, a successful political consultant whose notorious 50th birthday party, attended by Mayor Brown and other city leaders, featured a live sex act on stage.

Ted Fang said he considers Davis, a family friend for two decades, to be like “my brother.” But the Independent, he said, “is independent.”

Ted Fang said he is “unapologetic about being involved in the political process,” noting that the family joined with Davis last year to push a bond measure to refurbish the city’s aging Laguna Honda indigent hospital and rest home.

A top cause in recent months has been trying to block the sale of the Chronicle to Hearst, and the expected demise of the Examiner. In editorials, and on the news pages, the Fangs reasoned that San Francisco needed to maintain two papers. Critics now say the effort seemed calculated to ensure that the family could grab the Examiner.

That the Fangs are in a position to buy the paper from Hearst is, as Ted Fang puts it, “bristling with ironies dating back a century.” The Independent and Hearst have jousted for years in court over the city’s lucrative contract for legal notices. Now the family is about to gain control of the very masthead it fought.

“If Ted Fang has the same burning desire as old man Hearst to put his footprints in the sands of time,” O’Donoghue said, “then he’ll make this a success.”