San Francisco Examiner

If California's open primary were held today, Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush would run nearly even and well ahead of the closest rivals within their own parties, according to a poll published Sunday. Vice President Gore received 28% of the support in a hypothetical open primary compared with just 13% for former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, according to the survey conducted by the San Francisco Examiner and television station KTVU. Texas Gov.

San Francisco Examiner Publisher Ted Fang was replaced in the position by his mother Friday, less than a year after the family put out its first edition of the daily newspaper founded by William Randolph Hearst. Fang was notified of the decision Friday afternoon and is on administrative leave, said Executive Editor Zoran Basich. He will remain on the Examiner's board and retain an ownership interest in the family's chain of newspapers, Basich said.

Charles Lessington Gould, publisher of the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner when Patricia Hearst was kidnaped and who became a leading opponent of her subsequent imprisonment, has died of cancer. He was 77. Gould, who died Sunday in a San Mateo hospital, came to the Examiner in 1961 as publisher, a post he held until 1975 when he joined the Hearst Foundation and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. Gould served the Hearst Foundation until his death.

Negotiators for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and its 550 unionized workers reached a tentative contract agreement Monday morning after a 17-hour bargaining session. Officials of the Graphic Communications International Union and the newspaper declined to provide details on the pact pending a ratification vote by Herald Examiner workers scheduled for 8 a.m. today.

The San Francisco Examiner is a financial failure and its profit-sharing deal has harmed newspaper readers by holding back its larger partner, the Chronicle Publishing Co. said in legal filings Friday. The owners of the Chronicle, whose $660-million purchase by the Hearst Corp. has been challenged in a federal antitrust trial, urged U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker not to block the deal.

Former Justice Allen E. Broussard, who retired in August after 10 years on the state Supreme Court, will become a partner in the San Francisco law firm of Coblentz, Cahen, McCabe & Breyer. Broussard, 62, said in a statement he had received "several very attractive offers" but chose to join the firm because it "offers me the best opportunity to achieve my new goals and aspirations of the law."