Billionaire Philip Anschutz’s seven-year experiment with the San Francisco Examiner is coming to an end. His holding company, Clarity Media, has sold the free-distribution tabloid to a consortium led by Black Press Group, a Canadian publisher of mostly rural and community newspapers. Mark Harden of the Denver Business Journal, who was a hand at the old Hearst-owned Examiner before it was sold to the Fang family in 2000 and then to Anschutz in 2004, broke the news. No terms were revealed. The sale is to close Nov. 30, he says. Anschutz’s investment empire is headquartered in Denver.Add: No word yet on what the ownership change may mean for the Examiner. Black Press’ best-known newspaper properties are the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
