Examining Anschutz’s Plans

Slate’s Jack Shafer has a very intriguing piece today examining the possibly long-term newspaper/media/world domination strategy of billionaire Examiner backer Philip Anschutz. He proffers a few ideas as to how the Examiner family of papers might make a run against established papers. The article’s sort of complicated to summarize, so just read the whole thing.

The Examiner has a tough road to climb. As Shafer notes, the Post isn’t exactly falling down on the job just yet, and the Examiner (beyond its excellent city columns led by Harry Jaffe) isn’t exactly demonstrating a bastion of news reporting.

One thing about Shafer’s theory that has always puzzled us? If the Examiner is thinking long-term about the web, why is the Examiner’s web page so poorly designed and why does it not seem to post everything in the paper?

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