The Examiner? In Houston?

Houston, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth and San Antonio are on the list of nearly 70 American cities where Denver-based billionaire Philip Anschutz wants to trademark the name "The Examiner."
Anschutz is publisher of The Examiner in San Francisco, now a free tabloid that was once owned by The Hearst Corp., which sold the title to take over the main paper, The San Francisco Chronicle, and which also owns The Houston Chronicle, the cash cow of Hearst's newspaper division.
So, might there someday be an Examiner in Houston?
An Anschutz spokesman cautioned against jumping to any conclusions in this story in the SF Chronicle.

Still, why trademark the name in all these other cities?

Free newspapers are the going trend in the suffering newspaper industry these days as established dailies are giving birth to new titles to appeal to a younger demographic whose attention spans are time-challenged and whose primary interest is celebrities and other less-than-weighty crapola.

An Examiner in Houston would be a welcomed addition to the media landscape of Houston, especially for advertisers whose promotional budgets remain at the mercy of the Chronicle monopoly.

Of course, the Anschutz-owned Examiner is no paragon of journalism, with a bare-bones staff and all that entails. But the more eagle-eyed journalists watching the powers-that-be the better, in our opinion.

Anschutz is a risk taker, as witnessed by the millions he has poured into Major League Soccer.