The once notoriously anti-Chinese Hearst-owned newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, is now owned by a Chinese American family, a shift that some Asian Americans see as poetic justice. But the deeper question, raised also by the Chandler family's sale of the L.A. Times to the Chicago Tribune, is whether the Examiner will cover the "new city" -- let alone the "new California" -- that is coming into being. PNS editor Andrew Lam is a journalist and commentator for National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

The San Francisco Examiner has a new owner, a family named Fang, who got started in the media business when John Fang came to the United States from Shanghai via Taiwan some 40 years ago.

The news has produced mixed reactions in this city where Asian-Americans now comprise the largest single ethnic group. Helen Zia, author of the "Asian American Dreams," thinks "It's a spectacular event."

"San Francisco is the most Asian city" in the United States, she points out. Moreover, there is a certain poetic justice in the move as the Examiner "was once anti-Asian. It supported the Chinese exclusion act and the Japanese internment camp during World War II."

Ling-Chi Wang, professor of Ethnic Studies in Berkeley, is not so sure about the poetry.

"Symbolically, it is unprecedented," he said, "and, I suppose, a significant milestone in the history of Asian Americans." But he points out that the prevailing national trend is one paper per metropolitan area "and knowing the history of the Fang family's style of bottom line operation, I am pessimistic about the future of the Examiner."

Founded by William Randolph Hearst, the afternoon paper has been losing money for years. And Wang predicts the Fangs will do exactly what any good business does -- "publishing newspapers not as a service, but as a money-making proposition, and let the public be damned."

These two views represent the extremes of reaction to the news that a Chinese family has just acquired San Francisco's oldest newspaper. For some, it symbolizes Asian Americans coming of age, a cause for celebration. Others point to the Fang's history of highly partisan journalism.

Yet another view of the sale -- under which Hearst will reportedly pay the Fangs $25 million a year for three years to ensure continued publication of the Examiner -- is that it is simply a move to avoid an anti-trust suit from the U.S. Justice Department.

Helen Zia suggests that the Hearst subsidy recalls the paper's origins. "William Randoph Hearst started out using family money to start the Examiner. Why couldn't Ted Fang? In fact, Ted Fang has more experience than Hearst when Hearst started considering that Fang's been running the Independent for years."

Ling-Chi Wang concedes that the Fangs have made a series of right moves. "It is not just a giveaway by Hearst, it is also a subsidized giveaway for three years!"

Another right move, he suggested, would be for the new Examiner to have a Chinese language edition as the San Jose Mercury News is doing with its Vietnamese paper, Viet Merc. "The new Examiner may survive if it identifies itself as a San Francisco paper and not compete as a regional paper."

For his part, Ted Fang, the middle son of the family, has pledged a nationwide search for qualified employees. "We will be offering incentives to attract people to work here and to make the paper a success." Fang expects to boost the Examiner circulation up to at least 15% of the city's approximately 300,000 households.

George Koo, an Asian American businessman, is not sure the change in ownership will mean more coverage for Asians. "If you're running a paper you have to decide what's going to sell."

Koo says the Fangs can operate the Examiner "on the cheap, hiring people right out of college and run a small operation that's subsidized for three years by the Hearst corporation," and then walk away after three years with very little risk." Koo added, however, that he would be delighted to be proven wrong.

Richard Rodriguez, author, TV essayist and a long-time San Francisco resident, sees an interesting comparison with the recent change of ownership of the Los Angeles Times.

"There's a vast new California up for grabs right now that no one has yet described. The Chandlers gave up the Times because they could no longer describe that vastness -- the brown city. In San Francisco, the Chronicle will be a white suburban yuppie city newspaper -- but the question is what about the other city, the messy city of Serramonte, mixed race kids, working-class whites."

The Examiner, Rodriguez says, was closer to that other city. The challenge for the Fangs is whether they will see themselves as simply Chinese American publishers or as publishers of the "new" San Francisco.

Like it or not, the Fangs are now new players in a city that's traditionally known as Old Gold Mountain in Asia. It's where the Chinese arrived by the tens of thousands searching for opportunities since the Gold Rush and it's also the departure point for those who look toward Asia as the future, a Pacific Rim city.

"The time is clearly right for a paper that can serve as a window to Asia and a burgeoning Asian American community," says Helen Zia. "The Fangs have a real opportunity to open up new avenues of journalism."