INDEPENDENT SUCCESS STORY

By DAN WONG

Oddly enough, the publisher of the biggest non-daily newspaper west of the Mississippi River grew up vowing never to get into journalism.

"My father worked in newspapers all his life, so I saw that a newspaper man's life is hard," San Francisco Independent publisher Ted Fang said in a recent interview with The Lowell. "I grew up swearing I would not get involved in newspapers because it's tough. You work very hard and don't really know what your rewards are, especially monetarily. I didn't want to get into the business at all."

However, Fang said his desire to make a difference influenced his decision to enter the field. "I also wondered why there were no Asians in the publishing role," he said.

Fang, 30, graduated from Lowell in 1980 and earned a degree in ethnic studies at UC-Berkeley. As publisher, Fang oversees the content of the newspaper and helps with advertising and distribution.

Fang purchased the Independent in 1987 when it was a small neighborhood newspaper. When the San Francisco Progress folded in December 1989, Fang decided to distribute his paper city-wide, increasing the circulation from 40,000 in 1988 to 200,000 and publishing three times a week. Now, the Independent has a circulation of 372,000.

It was very difficult," said Fang, about the Independent's growth. "I took over this newspaper because I thought it was very small and it could be easily handled. But it's not."

Fang said an audit of the Independent showed that 90 percent of the people who receive the paper read it. The success of the Independent is largely due to its focus on neighborhood issues, he said.

"I see our role as giving a voice to residents of San Francisco," Fang said. "That's very different from the metropolitan dailies that concentrate on national and international news. Even when they cover San Francisco, they cover politics, which is nice."

"But if I'm a resident of San Francisco, I want to know if my garbage rates go up. If there's construction down my street, I'd like to know what's being built," Fang said. "None of the bigger papers cover that."

"The dailies won't cover high school sports because it's not important enough for them," he said. "But if your kid or brother was in it, of course you would want to read it. It's very important to you. We make the effort to go out there to cover them."

Fang attributes much of his success to Lowell, saying the courses "teach you critical thinking, push you to ask why things happen and why society is the way it is."

"Miss [Joann] Stewart had a lasting impact on my life," Fang said. "We read good literature, and I do believe those novels teach you about life and how to deal with different situations."

"I've learned to there's meaning to just about everything," Fang said. "When I'm trying to make a big deal happen, I listen closely tohat the other person says."

"Truly there are a lot of opportunities out there," Fang said. Lowell "students should take maximum advantage of that because they have a very good education."