Citizen Fang.

The openly gay publisher of the Examiner in San Francisco expands his political clout while fighting off critics

The late Harvey Milk, the first gay man elected to office in San Francisco, predicted that an alliance of gays and Asians would someday rule his city. That uneasy alliance may well be personified today in Ted Fang, the 37-year-old publisher of the 114-year-old San Francisco Examiner, once the flagship newspaper of the Hearst family dynasty. Fang is the first Asian-American publisher of a major metropolitan daily newspaper in America. He is also the first gay publisher of a daily--a fact you hear less often.

"In San Francisco, people don't even view the gay issue as anything unique at all," says Mayor Willie Brown. "It's the issue of Ted's ethnicity, the fact that he is the first Asian-American publisher of a daily newspaper--that's where the excitement is."

Fang views himself as a person with his feet firmly planted in both the Chinese and gay worlds of San Francisco. "I wouldn't have it any other way," Fang says. "From my Chinese heritage, I've learned good values, history, tradition, and hard work, and as an out gay person I have a strong sense of self, and I have more fun than my straight brothers."

With the acquisition of The Examiner in November, the Fang family now sits atop a mini empire of newspapers in the Bay Area. The acquisition has been very controversial, with critics contending that The Examiner has become a journalistic laughing-stock. But Ted Fang and members of his family remain a major force not only in San Francisco politics and business but in the United States and Asia as well.

Fang, born and raised in San Francisco, is the son of a conservative, hard-working, iron-willed couple who escaped the oppression of communist China and Taiwan. It was Ted's late father, John, who followed his dream to the United States to publish a newspaper free of government censorship and control. Along the way, he acquired several other businesses.

John Fang, who died in 1992, was a crusading journalist whose stories of the gangland Golden Dragon Massacre led to regular visits by FBI agents, who wanted to pick his brain about organized crime in Chinatown.

Ted's mother, Florence, is now the head of the family. A conservative Republican, she is a polarizing figure in Chinatown and a San Francisco power broker with a host of influential friends and allies, including the Bush family and government leaders in China and Taiwan.

Openly gay city supervisor Mark Leno says Ted Fang's is an Asian-American Horatio Alger story. "The Asian-American community in San Francisco is not as assimilated as the queer community and is still struggling for its fair share of political, financial, and social power," says Leno. "It is notable that while he thrives as an out gay man, he does so with the support of this very accomplished Asian-American family."

Above all, Fang is a businessman--some would say a ruthless businessman. But the hatchet man portrayed by critics seems not to jibe with Fang's easygoing demeanor. Everyone agrees that he's a charming, intelligent, hard-working, and likable guy. He comes across as friendly, unpretentious, and humorous.

Fang laughs at the contradictions. "I am a genuinely nice guy," Fang explains, "but I do break down walls and stereotypes. Being openly gay in the Chinese community can be controversial."

Fang knows that from his experience with his family. They discovered he was gay after his younger brother inadvertently discovered him in a room at the family's printing plant kissing another man. When Ted got home that night, "all hell broke loose."

"When I first came out it was very ugly, a time of great upheaval in my family," Fang says. His parents threw him out at the age of 22, and he moved in with his boyfriend at the time. One journalist would later joke that Fang's parents had hired Chinese gangs to break his boyfriend's legs.

"My parents came around," he says. "They realized that if you don't accept your son, you lose your son." The family matriarch, Florence, now "accepts and understands," says Fang, "although if you asked her, she would probably tell you she'd rather I not be gay." Last year the two sat down before the deal to buy The Examiner was announced. During that conversation, Fang warned his mother of the unflattering press that was to come and told her that it could include discussion of his sexual orientation. "She asked if there was no chance that I might get married to a woman," Fang recalls with a laugh. That was unlikely, since Fang shares his home with his lover of 3 1/2 years, Tony Thompson, a computer analyst.

The family is closely associated with Mayor Brown, and their relationship has sparked controversy. One of the area newspapers the family runs is The Independent, a thrice-weekly San Francisco free newspaper that has played the role of attack dog for the mayor, often lashing out at his opponents. Chief among the attackers is legendary columnist Warren Hinckle, a gonzo journalist who trolls around town with an eye patch and basset hounds and regularly uses the pages of Fang newspapers to launch tirades.

The process of acquiring The Examiner was a long, tortured legal morass that played out in the court-room, on the news pages, and in the fractured and byzantine world of San Francisco politics. Hearst Corp. had originally planned to buy the morning paper, the San Fracisco Chronicle, and either sell or close down the money-losing afternoon paper, the Examiner. That sparked a concerted campaign to save The Examiner, led by the mayor, the Fangs, and dozens of community groups.

The Fangs acquired The Examiner in November 2000 as part of a sweetheart deal that was more like a giveaway. The package included $66 million from Hearst Corp. to the Fangs over the next three years. That deal raised eyebrows and has led to lawsuits, accusations of political favoritism, and heaps of negative press. A federal judge went so far as to say the deal smacked of "cronyism."

One of the Fang family's chief critics is Ken Garcia, a columnist for the Chronicle who has blasted the deal. "The Examiner sale was one of the most unseemly public acts I've ever seen," Garcia says. He calls Ted Fang "unscrupulous" for "using his news pages to further his political agenda." But controversy has had a long life at The Examiner--a newspaper that, ironically, was part of an anti-immigrant campaign in the early 1900s that targeted Chinese as the "yellow peril."

The Examiner takeover has proceeded anything but smoothly. The entire staff departed with Hearst Corp. to the Chronicle as part of the sale agreement, leaving Fang the task of building the newspaper from scratch. The new Examiner has been plagued by technical problems and embarrassing typos, including misspelling San Francisco and Wednesday on the front page.

Fang has also had problems retaining staff. Within a month of the acquisition, Fang lost both the executive editor and the editorial page editor. One editor didn't even last a week. If that wasn't enough, the new Examiner has had distribution and circulation problems. Some readers who canceled their subscriptions after the Fang takeover have complained that they can't stop the paper from being delivered. Conversely, the paper is harder to find on the street than it had been when Hearst Corp. published it.

The missteps have earned the paper some unfriendly news coverage and ridicule, including a New York Times story that ran under the unflattering headline "San Francisco Paper Struggles With the Printed Word." The fiascoes have led people to question the newspaper's viability.

"It's the worst daily newspaper in the country," says the Chronicle's Garcia. "It's not worth spending a quarter on." Others have predicted that the Fangs have only intercepted The Examiner on its way to oblivion.

Susan Rasky, a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, says it's too soon to tell whether the newspaper will survive in its new form. The paper's fate will hinge on how well it can hold on to advertising and whether the Fang family will put their considerable resources into The Examiner.

"The mistake they made was launching the newspaper before they had all the kinks worked out," Rasky says. "It's not unusual to have problems with a start-up, but you don't launch a half-assed newspaper."

Ted Fang dismisses the criticism. "They don't know how to cover me, so they revert to stereotypes. `How could a gay Asian 37-year-old guy become the new editor and publisher of The Examiner? It couldn't be from hard work or intelligence. It must be deal making.'"

Garcia responds, "No one has ever questioned his intelligence or hard work, and until recently most people didn't know he was gay. To my knowledge, no one has ever criticized Ted for being Asian or gay."

Despite the naysayers, Fang says his family is in for the long haul. He likes to quote Chinese proverbs and fables, and there is one that he says describes his stubborn, tenacious family.

It's a story of a man who lived in a small village separated by a mountain from a town where he did business. Tired of climbing the mountain every day to get to the other side, one morning the man starts shoveling. While the villagers laughed, he said, "I am going to keep digging, and if I don't make it to the other side, my children will, and if they don't make it, their children will. We're just going to keep digging, and one day we'll move the mountain."

"That's my family," says Fang. "We're going to knock down the obstacles one at a time."

Willson, director of communications for the New York City Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, is a former editor of The San Francisco Sentinel and Frontiers.

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