San Francisco's mayor
wants buyers to save
its evening paper

The Examiner's owner wants
to sell the 'civic treasure' or
merge it with the Chronicle

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco Examiner hasn't always given Willie Brown good press. Still, the mayor doesn't want to see the afternoon paper die, and is looking for investors to help keep it alive.

Brown said Saturday that he wanted to put a committee together to find buyers for the paper and keep it running.

Hearst Corp., which owns the Examiner, has said it plans to buy the more successful morning San Francisco Chronicle and would try to find a buyer for the Examiner. If that effort fails, Hearst said it would merge the two.

While Brown has had a mixed, at times negative, relationship with the newspaper, he described the publication as a "civic treasure."

Brown compared his idea to the group former Mayor Frank Jordan assembled in 1992 to purchase the San Francisco Giants baseball team and keep it in town.

"If we can do it for ball teams, then we can do it for newspapers. It's very important," he told the Examiner.

Hearst executives could not be reached by telephone yesterday to comment.

The city's governing Board of Supervisors was scheduled to consider today a resolution by board president Tom Ammiano urging the city attorney to decide whether the city should sue to block the merger.

Newly re-elected District Attorney Terence Hallinan repeated Saturday his promise to make fighting the merger a priority.

Several experts said Brown's idea sounded interesting, but warned that there is danger when government gets involved in journalism.

Mel Opotowsky, former managing editor of the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, and a member of the board of the California First Amendment Coalition, said Brown can't involve city government in his efforts and should be seeking buyers on his own time.

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