Balitmore is but an hour's drive from Washington, and yet in the ways that matter it is light years away--gritty, blue-collar, reviving for sure but still beaten up from a few rough decades. It wasn't that many years ago that a glow on the harbor was likely a warehouse on fire.

And that's what makes Baltimore special for Philip Anschutz. In being so unlike Washington, Baltimore is so much like so many other cities one could name: Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Hartford, Philadelphia, St. Louis. They all wear the same scars.

On Wednesday, after months of anticipation, Philip Anschutz, the reclusive Denver oil and real estate tycoon, is launching the Baltimore Examiner, the third free daily in his chain, coming after San Francisco and Washington. And if Anschutz can make it in Baltimore, analyists believe he can make it anywhere, and woe to the established papers he challenges.

The Examiner model is unique: Free distribution, and home delivery to the affluent neigherhoods advertisers most want to reach; ad rates that are a fraction of those charged by the market's established daily; a tabloid format offering a quick read to people who are light or non-readers of the daily paper; and intense, lively coverage of neighborhoods.

The Baltimore Examiner will be unlike the two other Examiners in one important regard: It will compete directly against the long-established Sun with a comparable circulation, 250,000 daily versus the Sun's 246,000. The Washington and San Francisco papers print a third the number of papers as their competitors, the Post and the Chronicle.

Also, the Baltimore paper is starting from scratch. The San Francisco Examiner has a 140-year history, while the Washington tabloid was morphed  from the Journal chain of suburban papers.

The Examiner will publish six days a week versus the Sun's seven, skipping Sundays. The edit team will be a fraction of the Sun's size.

Can it work? The answer might not be known for years, but analysts seem to think the Examiner model has the best chance to turn a profit competing against established dailies. Anschutz, a billionaire several times over, has the capital to stick it out. The only question is, will he?

"All of these are tests in a sense," says Anschutz spokesman Jim Monaghan. "The jury's still out."

Monaghan, while conceding the Examiner's launch is an aggressive one, cautions against reading it exclusively as a challenge to the Sun. “We’re tapping into a large number of individuals who are not loyal newspaper readers,” he says. “The internet, iPods, everything is competition in that sense.”
 
Why Baltimore? He says research found that readers and advertisers especially were looking for an alternative to the Sun. The Examiner is offering ad rates half those charged by the Sun. Also, the tabloid will gain efficiency from sharing resources with the Washington Examiner.

Anschutz, the founder of Qwest Communications, first made his fortune as an oil wildcatter and now invests in sports teams, entertainment venues, movie theaters and movies.

How well his other two Examiners are doing is not known but the presumption is that they are losing money, likely hefty amounts, even as lean as their operations are.
 
“I would guess he’s probably not making money. It’s not easy to publish a new product and turn a profit. it took USA Today eight or nine years,” says newspaper analyst John Morton of Morton Research. But over time Morton believes Anschutz’s experiment could pay off, reaching precisely those light readers it targets.

A key challenge for Anschutz will be distribution, in a city lacking the convenient distribution networks of D.C.’s Metro or the Bay Area’s BART. “The key is not that it’s free, it’s how good is the distribution system?” says newspaper analyst Miles Groves of MG Strategic Research in Washington.

Groves admires the D.C. Examiner’s aggressive local coverage. “It’s a robust, feisty little local paper. If you have a product that hits the right demographic and gets the distribution right, the advertisers will pay the freight.”

Media buyers by nature love competition for the pressure it puts on pricing, and one Media Life spoke to is looking forward to Wednesday and the city's first new newspaper in memory.

“The Baltimore Sun, being the only game in town, didn’t have to negotiate or play the game as much as some media buyers would have liked,” says Jane Goldstrom, executive vice president and media director for MGH, a Maryland agency.

MGH has already placed several clients in the Examiner. She says of the Sun, “If it’s successful, they’re going to have to start moving.”