Pelosi goes to bat to keep Bay Area papers alive

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), worried about the fate of The San Francisco Chronicle and other financially struggling newspapers, urged the Justice Department Monday to consider giving Bay Area papers more leeway to merge or consolidate business operations to stay afloat. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, released by Pelosi's office late Monday, the Speaker asked the department to weigh the public benefit of saving The Chronicle and other papers from closure against the agency's antitrust mission to guard against anti-competitive behavior. The speaker said the issue of newspapers' survival and antitrust law will be the subject of a hearing soon before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy