After 75 Years, No More Journal in Northern Virginia as of Feb. 1

In just 10 days, Northern Virginia will be without a Journal newspaper for the first time since the days of the Great Depression.

Only months after being acquired by billionaire Denver investor and social conservative Philip Anschutz, the Journal Newspapers organization will abandon the "Northern Virginia" brand it has held since before World War II when three suburban Journal newspapers will morph together into the daily Washington Examiner on Feb. 1.

The new free distribution tabloid will be published six days a week (excluding Saturdays), flooding upscale neighborhoods throughout the D.C. area with a projected 260,000 home deliveries a day. Copies will also be available in 1,700 boxes.

The paper will challenge the Washington Post for both influence and market share. The Post's paid weekday circulation is 312,000.

Anschutz's Clarity Media Group is launching a new national newspaper empire with the Washington Examiner roll-out. It acquired the San Francisco Examiner, once a Hearst newspaper, last year and the rights to the Examiner name in at least 68 other cities, including Denver, Kansas City and Boston.

With the final edition of the Northern Virginia Journal later this month, prior to its morphing into the Washington Examiner Feb. 1, the Journal name's association with specialized coverage of Northern Virginia will be abandoned for the first time since the founding of the original Journal in the 1930s.

Whether under the name of the Northern Virginia Journal, simply The Journal, or as separate Fairfax Journal, Arlington Journal and Alexandria Journal editions, the organization had always included a Northern Virginia regional brand with its name and tailored itself to Northern Virginia readers.

According to Editor and Publisher magazine, Anschutz's $5.2 billion fortune was built largely on investments in oil, railroads, telecommunications, movie theatres and sports. He lives in Denver. At age 65, he is founder and largest shareholder of Qwest Communications and his partial sports holdings include six U.S. soccer teams and the Los Angeles Lakers. He has a controlling interest in the Union Pacific Railroad and ownership of the Regal Entertainment Group, the largest movie theatre chain in the U.S.

Anschutz has taken heat, according to a Nov. 12, 2004 article in the Washington Post, for funding organizations that oppose legalized abortion and legal protections for gays and lesbians. When he bought the San Francisco Examiner, the editor of a liberal Bay Area paper stated, "We were nervous he was going to bring his Christian evangelical politics to San Francisco." He's donated more than $500,000 to Republican candidates and organizations. His family foundation gave arch-conservative Focus on the Family founder James Dobson a special award in 1987. Dobson's group, according to its web site, works to "counter the media saturating message that homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable" and one of its policy experts called legalized abortion an example of when "Satan temporarily succeeds in destroying God's creation," according to the Post article.

Anschutz also gave $10,000 in 1992 to a statewide Colorado drive to support an amendment to the state constitution invalidating any state or local laws protecting individuals from discrimination based on sexual orientation. But his spokesmen assert Anschutz's personal views will not influence the editorial content of the Washington Examiner or his other newspapers.

There has been a hiring blitz in advance of launching the new Washington Examiner, which will be about 60 tabloid pages at first distributed in three distinct zones, having some local news and high school sports reported by zone.