A Thick Wallet = Examiner Success?

Editor’s Note: Yes, this is a long post, but it contains some worthwhile nuggets if you give it the time.

Eric Wemple’s City Paper column this week spends most of its length discussing Pulitzer “nominees,” including the talented six-time finalist Anne Hull from the Post, but it was the last item in his column that really caught our eye today.

Wemple spends a few paragraphs talking about Philip Anschutz, the billionaire backer of the D.C. Examiner, who, Wemple explains, is out selling the paper hard. There’s been no discussion of when the paper needs to hit profitability because Anschutz is committed to the paper long-term, D.C. Examiner Editor-in-Chief John Wilpers tells the City Paper.

Taking Wemple’s story a bit further, sources have confirmed to us that Anschutz, whose media acumen received a write-up in BusinessWeek this week, has been aggressively and personally marketing the paper in private meetings with some of D.C.’s highest of high society. In Georgetown salons, Capitol Hill townhouses, and phone calls to local elites, he’s talking through his plans for the Examiner brand–not just locally but nationally–and is naming large monetary figures that he’s willing to commit to the project to see it succeed.

Slowly, one-by-one, he’s convincing people that there’s an opening to take on the Post locally and established major regional papers (can anyone say the Indianapolis Star?) around the country. Wilpers told Wemple “The guy has proven he’ll stick to things through thick and thin,” but it’s not just his sticktoittiveness that’s winning converts. It’s his bankroll.

Over a glass of wine last week, one source told us “He’s telling us that there’s enough money there that there’s no way that the Examiner won’t succeed.”

It’s not just about the San Francisco Examiner or the D.C. version–the Examiner’s real strength will come with the long-term synergy of papers in nearly seventy cities and a national Examiner newswire, complete with interchangable pages.

For instance, a little unnoticed design change of late? The SF version relaunched with the same fonts, same design, same column widths, and same layout as the D.C. version. The long-term vision is for any page in any Examiner around the country to be instantly portable to any other Examiner paper.

And perhaps the truest sign of the Examiner’s desire to make an in-your-face mark in journalism in D.C.? It’ll be moving from its current home to Alexandria to 15th and K Streets NW in late summer or early fall. You might note that the Washington Post is a mere block up 15th from there.

The Examiner eagle is about to be literally staring down on the Post.

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