The Chron-Ex Merger: Why It Matters
An Introductory Note from the Editor

Saturdays tend to be what journalists call “slow news days.” City Hall is closed; school isn’t in session. The biggest item on the daily datebook might be the Kiwanis fish fry or maybe the Main Street art festival.

Most workers aren’t in the workplace, be that newsrooms or elsewhere. So it’s pretty well known among hacks that if you have to tell the world something bad, it’s best to do it late Friday or Saturday. And if it’s on the cusp of lawmakers’ recesses, so much the better. Especially if you have something that you’d really rather go through quietly.

So it’s unsurprising that the San Francisco Examiner’s owners announced a deal to buy the morning Chronicle on the afternoon of the first Friday in August, ensuring that it would play to as few readers as possible. Nor did the Examiner, in a report headlined “Hearst Buys Chronicle,” say anything about the fact that it’s not a done deal until Hearst can convince antitrust officials that a buyer for its own paper cannot be found, thus necessitating the Ex’s closure and the merger into the Chron. Neither daily has touched the question of what the merger might mean for San Francicans, especially the third of them who are of Asian descent.

So we thought we would.

Those of us who can remember the city some 15 or more years ago know that coverage of Asian Americans was pretty much nil and sometimes downright insulting. The fact that it’s less so now correlates to the advent and growth of a third player scarcely mentioned by either daily: the thrice-weekly San Francisco Independent. Whether that correlation is causation or coincidence remains the focus of the debate, but the fact that the first citywide voice owned by Chinese Americans, could well be imperiled by an Ex-owned Chron is not.

Flush with cash from 34 years of a good-ol’-boy agreement and freed of the obligation to print a second paper, the New Chron could easily put out a copycat Indy-thing, or for that matter, a copycat Bay Guardian or S.F. Weekly thing. An order for a real bona fide offer, on the other hand, might result in a real buyer for the Examiner, which would at least give the New Chron real competition and better things to do than kill off alternative voices.

It is true that the Independent’s owner has been rumored as a possible buyer, especially under a better deal. And it is true that the family that owns it is the same one that owns AsianWeek. And while we’re at it, it’s also true that many past and present staffers and contributors know and respect many people at the Chronicle and Examiner; the editor worked at the former.

It is not true that the story is a story to the journalists who work here only or even primarily because of the Fangs’ business interest in this matter. The implications of what will happen to Asian American coverage in the country’s most Asian American city in the absence of a powerful Asian American voice -- or in the presence of a more augmented one -- are enormous. Ignoring such a story, given our 20-year commitment to covering issues of concern to Asian Americans, would be unthinkable.

This issue brought the kinds of quandaries that would challenge any academic. Do we have opinions on the matter? You bet. We have clearly labeled them as such.

Any conflict of interest our reporters have faced this week, though, is no greater than that faced by our professional colleagues at Fifth and Mission. Our team tackled their stories in the way we hope our competitors would: with the goal to report what is out there accurately and completely, and to let you decide.

You ultimately will.

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