Qwest founder buys SF Examiner

[Newsjock]

http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2004/02/16/daily27.html

Denver investor and Qwest Communications founder Philip Anschutz is buying the San Francisco Examiner and two other Bay Area newspapers.

Anschutz, who owns the LA Lakers and LA Kings hockey franchises and other professional sports teams, becomes the fourth owner of the storied Examiner newspaper, which began publication in 1865 and was the center of William Randolph Hearst's newspaper empire.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. A formal announcement is expected this morning in San Francisco. The deal includes acquisition of a large printing operation, the San Francisco Independent and the San Mateo Independent newspapers in addition to the Examiner, a five-day-a-week tabloid. The San Francisco Independent publishes on Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays; the San Mateo paper publishes on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

... The Hearst organization sold the afternoon Examiner in 2000 to the Fang family, publishers of the two Independent newspapers, when Hearst bought its former rival, the morning San Francisco Chronicle. To satisfy anti-trust concerns of the U.S. Department of Justice, Hearst subsidized operations of the Examiner for three years following its purchase of the Chronicle.

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[Eric J in MN]

1. what are his politics? (nt)

nt

[Newsjock]

2. $oil, and anti-gay

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1346/n10_v43/21168731/p3/article.jhtml?term=

... In the late '70s, he and his dad struck it rich when they discovered one of the nation's 50 largest natural gas reserves underneath a tract they owned in Utah. The uncertain nature of the wildcatter's life made the younger Anschutz "extremely pragmatic" and "a student of timing and cycles." In 1982, he became Colorado's first billionaire when he bailed out of the oil business just before global prices collapsed.

... Anschutz has always used his money for political influence. In 1993, he gave $100,000 to a think tank controlled by his old friend Bob Dole. In '95 and '96, he spent $360,000 backing Republicans, especially the successful 1996 Colorado senatorial run of veterinarian Wayne Allard, a National Rifle Association stalwart who proposed "hangings in the streets" as a criminal deterrent. In the crucial final days of the successful campaign to pass Colorado's Amendment 2, which restricted the right of the state's cities to pass civil rights protection for gays, Anschutz donated $10,000 to the amendment's backers, Colorado for Family Values. At heart, suggests the Denver Business Journal's Dubroff, Anschutz isn't that interested in politics: "He's more of a person who doesn't like government interference."