Without going into too much detail, the highlights of my weekend were two trips to Ocean Beach (Saturday afternoon and early Sunday morning) with Jen and our dog Stella, and a Sunday evening outing to the Intersection theater here in San Francisco to see "The Language of Angels," a moving new play about small-town tragedies and the emotional haunting that follows.

What do you think of CAW's new "Clips of the Week" section that debuted a couple weeks ago? Do you find it interesting? Useful? Please share your thoughts; I'd love to hear from you.

Have a great week.

-Gabe

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But the sale of The San Francisco Examiner to a local publishing family stirred more visceral emotions. A sense of loss and sadness, a feeling that somehow things would never quite be the same in San Francisco, a feeling that history has been disrupted in some hard-to-define way, an unhappiness that the Examiner, a newspaper as troubled as the city it serves, was off to serve different masters.

The Examiner is an odd paper, but a fun one to read. It reflects the personality of its town. It is aggressive. It has an enormous staff for a paper its size by virtue of the joint operating agreement with the Chronicle that has been in place for 35 years. It is quirky, fast, a dedicated booster of San Francisco, insecure and colorful. It is a shadow of the newspaper that William Randolph Hearst created more than a century ago, but it retains the Hearst flavor, warts and all.

It is also wounded -- its circulation barely tops 110,000, less than a fourth of the Chronicle's. And when a major newspaper's circulation declines steadily toward the 100,000 level, warning bells are sounded. For 100,000 is a threshold for major, national advertisers. Slip below 100,000, and those advertisers often pull out.

San Francisco is a curious city, different indeed than the tourist destination of popular myth. It is a city of distinct neighborhoods, of Irish, Italian, African-American and Latino enclaves, and it really is an East Coast city -- Boston is a kindred soul -- that somehow got transplanted on the West Coast. Despite its reputation as a cosmopolitan hub, San Francisco is remarkably provincial, even with its newly affluent dot.com elite with their SUVs and multimillion-dollar homes, and it is self-absorbed and inward looking. Despite its cultural pretensions, Los Angeles -- that hated colossus in the South -- arguably has greater cultural attainments. But no matter: All things being equal, if one could pick between the two in which to live, who would choose LA?

It comes down to this: San Francisco is fun. It also is the only city in California where you don't need a car to survive, and that in itself makes it remarkable.

The Examiner reflects this city perfectly -- much better than the Times reflects Los Angeles -- and that is why its sale to the Fang family is so disturbing. That reflection is surely about to be altered.

When newspapers change owners, the newspapers report that fact as if it is a hugely important story. It is, at least to the reporters who work there, but the general public often couldn't care less.

But the Examiner sale was different. It's as if a piece of the city itself was sold. The buyers, unlike the Times' sale, have local roots. Arguably, they have more local roots than the Hearst Corp., which is based in New York.

But the Monarch of the Dailies will forever be identified with William Randolph Hearst, that squeaky-voiced newshound who somehow retained his adolescence through his long adulthood. Hearst family connections to the Bay Area remain strong, and one wonders how they will feel when they see the familiar Examiner and its energetic newsroom under new ownership.

It is cliche to say that an event marks "the end of an era." But sometimes a cliche fits -- God knows, they have certainly served the Examiner well over the years.

And it fits now.

--Jeff Ristine in the San Diego Union-Tribune, who reported that the Board of Regents of University of California selected graduate student Justin Fong of UCLA as the Regents' student member. "Say what you will about the University of California regents, but don't accuse them of holding a grudge. In yesterday's annual appointment of a student regent, the board of regents selected a UC Los Angeles graduate student who was among the protesters arrested on the day regents abolished affirmative action in UC admissions, hiring and contracting," Ristine reported. (March 17).

--Lisa M. Krieger in the San Jose Mercury New, who reported that an environmental coalition "sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, seeking stricter protection of the desert tortoise, bighorn sheep and 22 other threatened and endangered species that live in Southern California's Mojave and Sonoran deserts. By charging the federal agency with violation of the Endangered Species Act, the lawsuit is a serious legal challenge to the BLM's management of the 10.2-million-acre California Desert Conservation Area, a region shared by backpackers, motorcyclists, gold miners, cattlemen and an increasing number of imperiled plant and animal species," Krieger reported. (March 17)

--Scott Glover and Matt Lait, who reported in the Los Angeles Times that "Police Chief Bernard C. Parks has unilaterally ordered his detectives to deny county prosecutors access to information regarding the ongoing Rampart corruption investigation. Parks, sources said, blames Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti for mishandling the six-month probe, alleging that prosecutors have given the LAPD bad legal advice and can no longer be trusted," Glover and Laitt reported. (March 15).

--Susan Sward in the San Francisco Chronicle, who reported that "City officials are investigating corruption allegations involving San Francisco Building Inspection Department staff -- including an assertion that one inspector demanded money from a couple requesting a permit and that his high-ranking boss tried to cover up the incident. Officials at City Attorney Louise Renne's office declined to comment yesterday, but sources said the probe has been under way for several weeks." (March 15)

2000 POCKET DIRECTORY OF THE STATE LEGISLATURE ---------------------------------------------- 27th Edition of "the little red book" is now available! Current contact information on each legislator, including photos, committee assignments, Capitol and district office addresses, phone numbers and staff. Separate listings of all Senate and Assembly standing, select, special research, joint and sub committees, with members, staff, phone and room numbers. Don't be without this indispensable directory!

2000 LEGISLATIVE UPDATES VIA EMAIL ---------------------------------- Receive late-breaking changes to the Pocket Directory monthly throughout the year -- via email. To keep your directory up to date, you will be provided with any "information changes" that occur after the February publishing date. In addition to "changes," the updates will include profiles of new members, alerts to new committees and other legislative news items. Easy way to keep your directory current!

2000 U.S. CONGRESS DIRECTORY ---------------------------- Convenient 4" x 9" spiral-bound directory includes photos, key staff members and committee memberships of the 100 U.S. Senators and 435 U.S. Representatives. Separate listings of Senate and House committee and subcommittee memberships, the President's cabinet with key staff members, the State governors with addresses and phone numbers, and the Supreme Court members with phone numbers.

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1999-2000 WHO'S WHO IN THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE ------------------------------------------------- 8" x 11" loose-leaf binder of political and personal biographies of all 120 legislators, including each legislator's photo, education, career, campaign issues, legislative interests and accomplishments. Each district information page has exclusively created easy-to-read district and "locator" maps. The Who's Who makes a wonderful legislative yearbook keepsake.

1999-2000 CALIFORNIA STATE AGENCY DIRECTORY ------------------------------------------- Information on the governor's appointments! This handy 4" x 9" directory lists all agency and department-level organizations and most division and branch-level offices. Includes names and titles of state officials, with addresses, phone and fax numbers. Where a vacancy exists, the position is listed without a name. The next more complete edition will be published in the Fall of 2000.

COMING LATER THIS YEAR

Open & Public III ----------------- Open & Public II is no longer available -- it is being updated now and will be available in September 2000. For a current guide to public meetings and the Ralph Brown Act, see The Legal Notebook.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS NOW AVAILABLE

* The Legal Notebook * Navigating the Legislative Process * Conflict of Interest Laws for Local Government Officials * Paper Trails: A Guide to Public Records in California * California Election District Zip Code Directory * Election District Diskette * Mailing Labels on Diskette * Senate, Assembly & Congress District Wall Maps

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