The media is under- going tremendous change in San Francisco. So much change that it isn’t out of the question to wonder aloud if the time has come for a new kind of daily newspaper.

Is the most Asian city in the country ready for a pan-Asian daily -- in English?

The question arises as the fate of San Francisco’s afternoon daily, the Examiner, has been put into a kind of limbo by its parent company, the Hearst Corp., through the purchase of the morning daily -- the Chronicle.

I’ve written a bit for both over the years. I like them both. Buy them both. The more the merrier, as they say. The Examiner has been the scrappy upstart paper, circulation barely over 100,000, a well-written, feisty organization that unfortunately struggled in the afternoon. It only survived because of an existing “joint operating agreement” (JOA) with the bigger circulation Chronicle that assured profitability at the Examiner for the next few years.

But these are the days when that kind of safe play is like putting your Internet investment money into low-rate CDs. We’re in the era of the Day-trader, cocked for action. No one plays it safe anymore. Everyone wants more. So the little family that ran the Chronicle decided it was time to bust the JOA on its own. They would cash in the chips and put the Chronicle up for sale. And the bigger Hearst Corp., with first dibs, went for it without question. It came up with a reported $660 million.

Sold.

But the JOA was put into place for a reason -- to protect anti-trust concerns. If you’re a capitalist interested in fairness, you’re supposed to fight “monopolists” at the same time you fight communists (which have a monopoly on everything). At least, that’s how the notion goes in theory. So it’s ironic that the JOA has actually enabled the feared thing to happen. One company will soon own both papers. But just to make sure the Justice Department won’t create a stink, Hearst has announced it will sell the Examiner. Soon.

But who wants the Examiner?

An existing news corporation might find it enticing to own a piece of San Francisco. Possibilities? Knight-Ridder comes to mind. But they own the Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times in the area. That could raise a red flag the Justice Department wouldn’t be able to ignore. The New York Times owns the Press-Democrat in Santa Rosa. And it’s just small enough that maybe a gamble on the Examiner would be worth it. The Los Angeles Times has always wanted a piece of Northern California, but it’s available statewide. Would it want to get down and dirty in the local trenches when there’s so much news in Encino? (Insert laugh here).

The brokers and media analysts are all treating the Examiner as the paper nobody wants. The conventional wisdom goes that no one would be willing to buy the Examiner as long as it’s in the afternoon. Afternoon dailies are like old CPM computers. They’re not long for the world.

But as the more traditional suitors raise questions, maybe it’s time to look at the old standby for entrepreneurial drive and spirit: Isn’t there some immigrant out there who wants to buy a struggling afternoon big-city daily?

It’s time the investment brokers stop talking to themselves in the “money-ed” class, and start looking for realistic buyers elsewhere.

Who would be better than the folks who have traditionally bought the worst grocery store, the worst fruit stand, the worst laundry in the shabbiest part of every town imaginable, only to find that they could build up their modest enterprises into success stories over time.

What’s the Examiner compared to that bombed out grocery store in the abandoned neighborhood? The Examiner’s a good deal for the right person.

We’re talking Asian persuasion here, folks. The Examiner for sale could be the kind of opportunity that tells a mainstream population that a new institution, a new voice has arrived to match the “New San Francisco.”

Immigrants have made San Francisco’s population nearly 30 percent Chinese. Already, two major Chinese-language dailies serve that population, both with circulations around 60,000. The World Journal and the Sing Tao Daily aren’t just local yokel rags. They’re backed by international interests in Taiwan (World Journal) and Hong Kong (Sing Tao). Either one of the Chinese dailies has the staffs, delivery trucks or printing presses. But the interesting thing is the kind of daily newspaper that could be born. On the “NCM: New California Media TV” program I host, I’ve asked Tim Lao at the Sing Tao about the possibility of a bilingual, Pan-Asian newspaper. He’s said that as immigrants assimilate, and as a second generation emerges, the Chinese press logically should develop a more bilingual sense. The World Journal would be in an even better position to make a go of a Pan-Asian daily.

Consider the news that paper could get into. Last week, when Supervisor Leland Yee announced he would not run for mayor, the white press got the general headline. But behind the scenes there was bickering from within the Chinese community that stemmed from a mistranslated quote in the Sing Tao! That was never covered in the white press.

At this point, it’s a “vision thing.” The demographics of the city are changing. And no daily truly reflects that tremendous change. Not yet. But when someone wants to create such an animal, the audience will already be there.