The commuters speed-walking into the Silver Spring Metro station around 8 o'clock yesterday morning didn't know it. But they had just stepped into the front line of Washington's brewing newspaper war.
A couple of people picked up the pace. Others attempted to slide in on the side. There was simply no escaping the three competing hawkers from the Express, a free daily tabloid owned by The Washington Post Co., and the Washington Examiner, a free daily tabloid that made its debut yesterday.
The Examiner varied in the District, Maryland and Virginia.
(The Examiner)
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The odds were not even. There were two yellow-vested Express hawkers to one Examiner hawker, whose blue apron still carried the name of the Journal Newspapers, the Examiner's predecessor. While he belted out, "Examiner, formerly the Journal!" the Express hawkers preferred a quieter approach.
Most commuters didn't seem to notice. They grabbed whatever was handed them and kept walking.
The scene at Silver Spring repeated itself yesterday at Metro stops in Northern Virginia and the District.
Suburban commuters are just one portion of the upscale audience whom the Examiner's owners, Clarity Media Inc., a Denver-based holding company owned by billionaire investor Philip F. Anschutz, hope to attract with the Examiner. Starting yesterday, the Examiner distributed an estimated 260,000 copies of the newspaper through news racks scattered across the region, hawkers at Metro stations and carriers who delivered it to homes in targeted census tracts.
Some local residents who went to look for the debut issue, however, said they had trouble locating one.
"I couldn't find one outside," said Mary J. Johnson, a federal government worker who said she searched Examiner newspaper boxes outside her downtown office building yesterday morning in vain.
Others, who received postcards last week informing them they would receive a copy, woke up this morning to find they hadn't. Hawkers appeared at stops along the Orange and Blue lines, but apparently not at many Red Line stops in Montgomery County, according to commuters.
"As far as I know, the paper is going out with few glitches," publisher James McDonald said yesterday afternoon. "No significant problems were brought to my attention." He added that he had not yet seen the latest field reports.
