In This Issue

BACK WHEN THE San Francisco Examiner was first sold to the Fang family, I got a lot of calls from reporters wanting comment, and other than mentioning my general bewilderment at the state of the first few issues, I think I had a pretty consistent line: if the Fangs were going to do a serious newspaper that was willing to take on the Willie Brown machine and the local power structure, they had a chance of success and I wished them the best. If they were going to use the paper to push the careers of the politicians who did them favors, then it would be a flop.

And, somehow, the Fangs ignored my advice. As Tali Woodward pointed out last year (see "All in the Family," 4/30/03), the family members turned the Ex into a political tool and a piggy bank for themselves and their pals, and in the process pretty much guaranteed it would never succeed. Now, with the paper apparently on the brink of collapse, the family has sold it to Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, a reclusive investor who is said to be a conservative Christian who supports right-wing Republican causes. And I'll say to him the same thing I said about the Fangs:

If he takes this seriously, and puts out a real newspaper, and pours a ton of money into it (we're talking multiples of tens of millions of dollars, over multiples of years) and keeps his Christian-right values and causes out of the news section, then he might be able to do a real public service and challenge the San Francisco Chronicle's daily newspaper hegemony. And if he can do that, it will be proof that the days of daily competition in U.S. cities are not over.

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One of the saddest things I've seen in the news lately was Sen. Barbara Boxer's statement in opposition to gay marriage. Boxer used to be a genuine liberal, and she comes out of Marin County and San Francisco; I know she doesn't believe that. As we point out in an editorial on page 11, this battle is far from over – but the end result is inevitable. The likes of Boxer are on the wrong side of history, and it won't be all that long before they are listed in the hall of shame with so many others who refused to take a stand when a civil rights movement needed them.