By Michelle Locke
The Associated Press

The new San Francisco Examiner has been making headlines for months, caught in a roiling stew of family feuds and political rivalries.

On Nov. 22, it started printing them.

"We are making history," said Ted Fang, the 37-year-old publisher, boyishly exuberant as he addressed his troops in the Examiner? new quarters overlooking San Francisco? busy Market Street.

To get there, Fang and the editors and executives he? recently hired have had to survive an antitrust challenge, scramble for room in a space-starved city and figure out how to get out a brand new product, all in the glare of competing media.

What they haven? had to worry about is high expectations.

"The one thing they?e not expecting us to do in San Francisco is to put out a great paper. They don? even know what a great paper is," says consultant Roger Black, who is helping with the newspaper? design.

Like everyone else involved in the new daily newspaper, he? betting it will succeed.

"We will do it. We are going to do it. We?e not going to do it on Day One. We?e not going to do it on Day 20. It? going to be a growth process of getting it right and correcting our mistakes but also listening to the readers," he says.
Days before the Nov. 22 debut, the Examiner? new look was still being worked out. The big switch is that it? going from afternoons to mornings. (The new Hearst Corp.-owned San Francisco Chronicle remains a morning paper, but is planning a small afternoon edition as well.)

No drastic changes were planned in typeface and layout, but designers are hoping for a modern, Web-inspired look. Hearst? old slogan, Monarch of the Dailies," for instance, is gone, replaced by daily one-liners that will aim for the pithy over the ponderous "Monarch Butterfly of the Dailies" is one possibility.

The story of the old Examiner goes back to 1887 when young William Randolph Hearst talked his father into giving him the "miserable little sheet," and proceeded to make media history.

The story of the new Examiner began in August 1999, when Hearst said it was buying its longtime rival, the Chronicle, for $660 million, and would sell or close the Examiner.

Antitrust questions quickly arose amid fears that Hearst would create a one-newspaper town. Maverick political consultant Clint Reilly, who once left the Examiner with a broken ankle after a confrontation with executive editor Phil Bronstein, sued to block the Chronicle sale.

Hearst ultimately satisfied the Justice Department by announcing in March that it had found a buyer for the Examiner willing to preserve competition: the Fang family, publishers of the San Francisco Independent, a free neighborhood paper that publishes three times a week, and AsianWeek, a national English-language weekly paper for Asian Americans.

It turned out to be more of a gift than a sale, coming with a $66 million subsidy from Hearst, to be paid out over three years.
The transaction made the Fangs the first Asian American family to run a major U.S. daily.

It also means that a daily once used by Hearst to trumpet his "yellow peril" Asian prejudice now depends on Asians for its survival.

Does Fang savor the irony?

"Yes," says Fang, who can be wary and monosyllabic in interviews with a press he doesn? believe has always treated him fairly.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker called the Hearst-Fang deal "malodorous," and reeking of political favoritism, but ultimately dismissed Reilly? lawsuit and allowed the Chronicle-Examiner joint operating agreement to be dissolved.
A four-month hiatus was declared before the Nov. 22 changeover.

One more suit is pending, filed by a Fang printing rival who claims Fang will use the subsidy to drive competitors of the Independent out of business. Fang says the claim is groundless, and that every penny of the subsidy will go to the new Examiner.

Some in town already have dismissed the new Examiner as a corporate sleight-of-hand that won? outlast the subsidy. They also question whether the new Examiner can provide a nonpartisan voice, given the Independent? history of vigorously supporting candidates backed by the Fang family.

Fang says he is serious, and he backed that up by hiring some heavy hitters, including two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Porterfield as managing editor. Fang admits to being "an opinionated guy." But at a recent meeting with his new staff, he promised fairness and accuracy will be paramount.

"I believe that Ted wants to put out a credible newspaper," says Martha Steffens, the new Examiner executive editor and former executive editor of the Press & Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y.

"Does this look like we just plan to be here for three years?" she adds, waving a hand to encompass the heavy wood furnishings of her offices.

Outside in the newsroom, the mood was part excitement, part nerves, part frenzied activity, underscored by the smell of fresh paint. Discarded foam computer casings were piled up next to the elevators; quick work had created net rows of cubicles.
"I call this the "Miracle on Market Street," said Steffens, whose new business cards were delivered halfway through the interview.

The new Examiner will focus tightly on San Francisco stories. One-third of the hires so far are people of color, part of a plan to create "the most diverse newsroom in America," one that will reflect diverse ideologies, opinions and lifestyles as well as races, Fang says.

During the antitrust trial, Reilly said his experts determined it would take $250 million over six years to run a competitive newspaper.

The Fang family, which has revived eight failed newspapers, says they?l do it for much less by switching to mornings, offering cheaper ads than the Chronicle and making other technological changes.

About 150,000 copies were planned for the first run.

"We?e concentrating on building a great newspaper for San Francisco," says Fang. "Let the naysayers speak their piece. We?e moving forward and we?e going to give the people of San Francisco a newspaper they can be proud of."