San Francisco Examiner

The San Francisco Examiner is a daily newspaper in San Francisco that has been being published since 1865. The paper's original name was the Daily Examiner, and for a very long time the paper was in direct competition with the city's other daily paper-the San Francisco Chronicle-making San Francisco "a two-paper town." In 1965, the paper began publishing an afternoon edition while the Chronicle published a morning edition, thus eliminating the so-called two-paper town war. For more on the Examiner, including a brief history and a look at its sections, read the article below.

The Examiner's reins were taken over in 1867 by the infamous, larger-than-life William Randolph Hearst, who was only 23 at the time. It is said that Hearst's father-George Hearst-accepted control of the paper as payment of an outstanding gambling debt. William Randolph Hearst's splashy name and notoriety made the paper's circulation swell, as did some of the writers he brought on to craft stories, including literary greats Mark Twain and Jack London. Yellow journalism came into vogue during the time Hearst ruled over the paper, and the Examiner quickly adhered to YJ's formula of gossip, scandal, and vicious satire. This too made the paper's popularity shoot through the roof, and the Examiner became known as a somewhat trashier, less stuffy counterpart to its more serious-minded competition, the Chronicle.

The paper operated more or less without any major shakeups, hitches or redesigns (minus the aforementioned '65 evolution of the afternoon edition) until the year 2000, when businessman Ted Fang assumed control of the Examiner name and its extensive archives while the Hearst Corporation went on to acquire the paper's one-time competitor, the Chronicle. The last day of Hearst Corporation-controlled publication of the Examiner was on November 21, 2000, and shortly after the paper made a move many had been saying it needed to make ages ago-it moved to tabloid format, thus dramatically shrinking its size and finally giving San Francisco it's New York Post equivalent to the New York Times (the Chronicle). In February of 2004, the Examiner was purchased by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz for a reported 20 million dollars.

The San Francisco Examiner differs very little from most other major metropolitan newspapers. It offers a front page, of course, which depending on what the biggest story of the given day is, focuses on local, national, or international matters. The paper also offers sections focusing on sports, business, entertainment, technology, travel, real estate, obituaries, classifieds, and food and restaurants. The paper's editorial columnists include P.J. Corkery and Christopher Caen, as well as the highly popular syndicated "Scoop" column, which focuses on celebrity gossip and chatter.

You can read the San Francisco Examiner online at The Examiner. Here you will find not only all of the sections mentioned in the previous paragraph, but also the much-visited Breaking News section, which offers-you guessed it-news breaking across the AP wires. Not only will you get breaking international, national, and local news, but also breaking news in entertainment, business, sports, and the tech industries.