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James Ledbetter and Katharine Mieszkowski

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The San Francisco Examiner Death Watch

By Katharine Mieszkowski
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 11, 1999, at 5:42 PM ET

Hi Jim:

RSS

I, too, am enjoying the "We Are the World" eclipse coverage. This from Reuters: "Druids danced, Muslims prayed, Hindus bathed, and Europeans stopped work and took to the streets as an eerie twilight followed by darkness covered their capitals at about noon."

Just as we Americans expected: Those Europeans will use any occasion as an excuse to stop working. They probably all went right home and took naps afterwards, too. If the eclipse had happened here, of course, we would have just taken our cell phones and other gadgets outside and kept right on multitasking.

But since you're tired of all this technology talk, nature boy, back to my original obsession of the week--the morbid San Francisco Examiner death watch. Here's one more reason to frown at the prospect of losing the city's other daily. Today's Examiner carries a front-page investigative piece that's the latest installment in their ongoing coverage of an FBI probe into city contracting abuses, involving real estate development. At the center of the action is Charlie Walker, a local truck driver and longtime friend and supporter of Mayor Willie Brown, who is seeking re-election.

Incidentally, in a troubling sign of the times for journalism, Charlie Walker refuses to be interviewed by the Examiner unless they agree to pay him $250,000 if he's misquoted. He's clearly ever the smart business man.

Anyway, today's Examiner piece reveals that the FBI has now expanded to investigate various potential developments on the San Francisco waterfront. What's so hysterical about this piece of gritty city reporting, the kind of thing that makes true-blue newspaper types bluster with civic pride, is that on the very same day, the Wall Street Journal carries a puff piece about the development of the self-same waterfront: "In San Francisco, Great Views and a Ferry."

In the Examiner story, port director Doug Wong appears scheduling a hearing about one of Charlie Walker's crony's development projects, which is apparently now under investigation. In the Wall Street Journal, the same official Doug Wong demures that port administrators offices won't be housed in the newly renovated Ferry Building, because the real estate is just too valuable ($60 per square foot), and they'll settle for lesser waterfront views down the road ($46 per square foot). How modest.

While the local paper chases a story involving the Mayor, the FBI, and the waterfront, the Wall Street Journal finds in the same waterfront a tale of a city re-inventing itself through heroic redevelopment. It's tragicomic.