Denver financier Philip Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group is expected to announce today that it will launch a free daily newspaper in Baltimore next year, a person close to the company said.
The Baltimore Examiner will be the third free daily publication in the growing Examiner chain.
Clarity operates The San Francisco Examiner and The Washington Examiner. It also has trademarked the Examiner name in 69 cities, including Denver. The company distributes its newspapers through vendor racks and home delivery. The papers publish Monday through Saturday.
In Baltimore, the startup newspaper would compete with the Baltimore Sun, which is owned by the Chicago-based Tribune Co.
Anschutz, known for taking undervalued assets and turning them into profit generators, purchased the struggling but storied San Francisco Examiner in 2004. He launched the Washington Examiner in February using the operations and distribution of Alexandria, Va.-based The Journal Newspapers, which he also acquired in 2004.
Media analyst John Morton said it is hard to determine how the newspapers are doing because their financials are not publicly available. Nonetheless, they continue to publish, even with The Washington Examiner operating in the shadow of the acclaimed Washington Post, he noted.
“The people they seem to be appealing to are those who aren’t happy with what they get in the news on television but aren’t interested in the heavy lifting of The Washington Post,” said Morton, president of media consulting firm Morton Research Inc. in Silver Spring, Md.
Clarity last month hired Michael Phelps, vice president of Lee Enterprises Inc. and publisher of the Quad-City (Iowa) Times. In announcing his departure, Lee Enterprises said Phelps would serve as a general executive with Clarity Media Group.
Staff writer Kristi Arellano can be reached at 303-820-1902 or karellano@denverpost.com.
