The Chron-Ex Merger: A Question of Diversity

Actor Garrett Woo hadn’t known about the impeding merger of San Francisco’s two daily newspapers -- nor did he care that much.

“They’re so similar anyway,” Woo said when told last week about the Hearst Corporation’s plans to buy the morning Chronicle and to shut its own Examiner down if a buyer cannot be found.

Similar sentiments came from others randomly stopped on sidewalks in San Francisco and San Jose. Most expressed mild dismay and resignation. After all, many readers of the two dailies think they have been unilaterally owned for years, and that San Jose itself has only one daily. The paper still comes out, so what’s the big deal?

Diversity.

Almost all of the same two dozen Asian Americans, randomly interviewed last week, voiced dissatisfaction with how the dailies are covering one of the country’s most diverse cities. And if the deal goes through -- and it hasn’t yet -- “the resultant damage to San Francisco’s economy and diversity of voices and opinions would be irreparable,” warned Mayor Willie Brown in an Aug. 20 letter to Attorney General Janet Reno. Once again, her Justice Department holds in its hands the fate of daily journalism in San Francisco, just as it did 34 years ago.

In 1965, federal antitrust officials had the final say over whether Chronicle and the Examiner could share production, presses and profits by saying yes to their joint operating agreement. Now, the papers have asked Justice for permission to dissolve the pact, paving the way for the news staffs to merge.

Examiner officials and many organizations that have received financial support from the Hearst Corp. said minorities have little to fear from a Hearst-owned Chronicle. Executive Editor Phil Bronstein said since 1990, his paper has been committed to increasing coverage of minorities by creating race-specific beats. “Any newspaper that’s in a city as diverse as this one that does not cover [ethnic issues] is just asking not to be read.”

Indeed, the acquisition of the Independent in 1987 by the Pan Asia Venture Capital Corporation and that paper’s growth, correlates closely with the decade-long surge in Asian American political power in the city.

Though API population was approaching 25 percent by 1985, the city’s Board of Supervisors had no Asian American representation for the first half of that decade. During his reign as mayor in the ’60s and early ’70s, Joe Alioto appointed George Chin to a seat in February 1973, and in 1977, then-mayor George Moscone appointed Gordon Lau. Both Chinese Americans faced election challenges the same year they were appointed. Chin, the city’s first Asian American supervisor, lost that challenge; Lau won his first round in 1977 but lost in 1979.

In 1988, a year after the Independent’s acquisition, then-Supervisor Tom Hsieh, appointed in 1986, went on to win election to the board -- the first time an Asian American had done so in 11 years. He went on to win again but lost in 1996.

But by then, Mabel Teng was on board, having edged out incumbent Annemarie Conroy in 1994. The city also had its first African American mayor, former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. That year, two more Asian Americans, Leland Yee and Michael Yaki, scored seats on the board.

Independent publisher Ted Fang said that although his newspaper was not devoted to a specific ethnic community, simply being a minority creates more awareness of minority issues.

“Being Asian American myself, I am sensitive to the fact that all the communities in San Francisco have to be covered,” he said. “But I don’t see the Independent as an Asian American newspaper. The Independent covers the neighborhoods of San Francisco, and if there are more Asian Americans in those neighborhoods, we cover them.”

For Yee, the Independent has provided a “voice to carry out neighborhood issues. “My sense is that reporters from the Independent gravitate toward neighborhood issues and give more coverage to those issues” than other papers, he said.

Yaki agreed, saying the Independent’s focus on minority and neighborhood issues has made its endorsements especially powerful.

“The Independent is one of the most important endorsements a candidate can get. People pay attention. It has definitely influenced the politics of San Francisco,” said the supervisor, who received an endorsement when he ran three years ago.

Coverage in the two dailies has improved since the thrice-weekly, home-delivered broadsheet became a force in the city, he said, “partly because they can’t ignore the way the market has changed and partly because of the Independent.

“Anytime you have competition, others respond. The Chronicle and the Examiner may not have responded as fast [to the changing demographics] if they were not competing directly to the Independent.”

Mabel Teng, the first supervisor elected since Hsieh in 1992, agreed. “San Francisco has benefited from being a multi-newspaper town.”

DIVERSITY GAP PERSISTS

Asian American political power isn’t the only factor correlated to the Indy’s advent. Large-scale minority hiring began in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s; indeed, many Chronicle staffers can remember a time not so long ago when they weren’t sure there were any minorities on staff.

Today, minorities make up 18.8 percent of about 300 editorial staffers, of whom 9.4 percent are Asian American, according to a human resources spokesperson. Among the much smaller Examiner staff, 14.3 percent are minorities. On the other hand, the Independent’s workforce, at about 35 percent minority and 20 percent Asian American, according to Independent publisher Ted Fang, closely mirrors citywide demographics.

Though minorities, especially at the Chronicle, will disproportionately weigh toward the low end of a seniority list, the San Francisco chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association has taken no stance yet. “We have no official position on the merger, just that I am concerned over the possibility of AAJA members and friends losing their jobs,” said co-president Matt Dunn.

While Fang declined to express an opinion on the Chronicle’s and Examiner’s coverage of Asian American issues, he did say staff diversity at both is still lacking.

“A newsroom has to reflect the communities they serve,” he said. “As well-intentioned as the Examiner might be, if there is no minority representation in the senior management, they just can’t relate to the life experiences of the majority of the people of San Francisco.”

THE THIRD PARTY

The Independent, which with 200,000 readers could be the closest thing to a daily owned by Asian Americans. It is also the third party that has potentially the most to lose -- or lots to gain -- depending on whether Reno OKs the Examiner’s shutdown or forces its sale.

“This city deserves to have more than one major paper. I believe it would do a major disservice to, for example to the Independent newspaper,” said former mayoral candidate Ben Hom. “If there’s no other competition other than the Chronicle, the Independent would no longer be able to compete financially in any way.”

The Board of Supervisors apparently agreed. On Aug. 23, it voted 10-to-0 in support of having the Justice Department ensure that Hearst make a real effort to sell its paper.

Though widely reported that the company had done exactly that last month, the facts differ. What has been on the market, and what may now not be, is the Examiner’s name, its circulation list and the right to a buyer to retain the staffers it wants. The rumored price tag: $300 million to $500 million.

“With no printing plant, no business with it, it’s just a shell,” said UC Berkeley law professor Stephen Barnett. “It’s a less attractive property on the market than before the JOA.”

Ironically, the Independent’s owner, Pan Asia Venture Capital Corp., is the only other company in the city that owns broadsheet printing presses. But the company, which also owns AsianWeek, has said it has no interest in pursuing the deal as it is now framed.

These days, it’s more worried that its flagship paper, which is delivered free to San Francisco homes three times a week, will get killed off by a Hearst-owned Chronicle. Already, say sources, the Examiner is working on a new neighborhood-focused weekly section.

Ironically, that section, “City Zone,” was cited by the leader of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education -- named for African American publisher Bob Maynard -- as evidence of Hearst’s commitment to minorities.

Although he admitted that he knows little about Hearst’s offer or its legal battles, President Steve Montiel said that “I would think that if anything, [a one-daily town] would help the Independent.

“Right now someone has a choice of a San Francisco based daily and the Independent and some of the weeklies. ...With one daily, it’s less competition.”

AsianWeek publisher James Fang, Ted’s brother, countered: “We’re all for fair competition. But what this is unfair competition,” especially given the years of good-ol-boy deals that the dailies have benefited from. Ironically, few might have known more about that than Maynard himself, who became the first African American to have owned a mainstream daily, the Oakland Tribune, about a decade ago. (He has since died, and the paper is now owned by the Alameda Newspaper Group, a Dean Singleton chain.)

The Fangs haven’t ruled out such a dream for the long-term, but say they’ve had little chance to contemplate it in light of what they see as an imminent threat. Pointing to the bitter fight that it, the Examiner and the Chron-Ex business arm have been waging since 1989, the Independent said in an Aug. 24 editorial that it feared that a Hearst-owned “would likely use its monopoly power to steal all city papers’ advertising” through copycat publications and predatory pricing.

In his letter to Reno, the mayor himself voiced similar fears. “Early termination of the Joint Operating Agreement...would result not only in the immediate closing of the city’s second daily newspaper, but also threaten the existence of the city’s third major newspaper as well.” he warned.

Reacting to the city’s efforts, Examiner Publisher Timothy White told the Associated Press, “I think they’re basically asking the attorney general to do her job, and I have every confidence she will.”

This main article was researched and written by Janet Dang, Jason Ma, Joyce Nishioka, and Perla Ni.