WE WERE ALREADY well along with our plans for this week's cover story when I saw a copy of last week's East Bay Express. At first glance it looked like the sort of thing that gives weekly newspaper editors nightmares: the Express had just done a big story on media consolidation – one week ahead of us. –And then I read it. – What you have here is a perfect example of what happens when two very different publications, run by very different folks, with very different outlooks on the world, compete in the same local market. The Express, owned by New Times Corp., based in Phoenix (the same outfit that owns the SF Weekly), takes, in a story by Will Harper, essentially the same line as Michael Powell, the right-wing nut who chairs the Federal Communications Commission: there's no real need for tighter rules against media-ownership consolidation, because despite the fact that only a tiny handful of giant companies own the vast majority of the big news media in this country, there are still more and more choices for the consumer.

As Camille T. Taiara reports on page 18, that's just wrong.

Yes, there are all sorts of new cable and satellite TV channels, and the beginnings of satellite radio. Yes, the Internet has made a huge difference in the way people communicate. Yes, the media landscape is changing.

But right now, today, an ever-smaller handful of megacorporations control a growing share of the nation's airwaves and dominate the print media. And as the upstart new choices the Express talks about grow and get influential, the Big Boys will start to buy them up too.

That is, if the federal government does what the Express is essentially calling for, buys the Mike Powell doctrine and stays out of the way.

And chain ownership makes a big difference. The 11 New Times alternative weeklies all have different editors, and I don't think those editors (many of whom I know) take orders directly from Phoenix every week. But the papers all have a similar tone. None do editorials or run political endorsements. None ran the big Iraq story that 60 other alt papers published in April. None of them, I suspect, would run Taiara's story.

That's why it's crucial to limit media consolidation.

Tim Redmond

P.S. A special and heartfelt good-bye to Susan Gerhard, who is moving on to a career in freelance writing after 14 (amazing!) years as a Bay Guardian arts writer and editor. Susie helped build our A&E section, wrote some of our best cover headlines, and always, always cared deeply about the paper's mission. We miss her already.