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originally uploaded by russ.

If you don’t know the name Phil Anschutz, well maybe you know of his accomplishments more than you realize.

Anschutz founded the company that is now Qwest. His idea was to build fiber cmmunications lines in the area next to the tracks on the Southern Pacific railroad,which he controlled in the 1980s before selling it to the Union Pacific.

Qwest took off and under Anschutz’ initiative, eventually purchased US West. He’s no longer on the board,but remains Qwest’s largest shareholder. So a little bit of that last phone call you made goes into his pocket.

A few years ago, Anschutz started acquiring and starting newspapers. He bought the near-moribund San Francisco Examiner from Hearst, and last year started the Washington (D.C). Examiner. His new Baltimore Examiner revs up in May. All three papers are free and ad-supported.

Lesser known is that in late 2004, Anschutz acquired domain name rights for dozens of other city name-Examiner combinations.

I just checked Network Solutions’ WHOIS database. Lo and behold, he owns the domain PortlandExaminer.com. That’s a screen grab at the top of this post.

Anschutz’ representatives deny active plans to start any more newspapers, and describe this domain name purchase more in terms of a pre-emptive action.

But as someone who has been in and around the journalism business since the 1970s, and has written for national and local newspapers from USAToday to the Portland Tribune, I can tell you that although I don’t see a “Portland Examiner” in the near-term, nothing that happens in the newspaper world surprises me any more.

Related posts:

1. Think Portland Only Has One Daily Newspaper? Think Again
2. Can Northwest Portland support two newspapers?
3. A Tribe Called Qwest Gets Its Due
4. Help me out here
5. Portland’s Daily Journal of Commerce Opens Window To PDX’s Toils, Troubles and Projects