Mike Lacey and Bruce Brugmann both got into the newspaper business essentially to "punch a few people in the fucking head," as Lacey, who founded the Phoenix New Times in 1970, once said. Brugmann phrases it slightly differently, explaining that he began the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 1966 "to provide an alternative to the big monopoly dailies - to print the news and raise hell."

Lacey and Brugmann are legends of alternative journalism. Brugmann, fifty-nine, is a stubborn bear of a man from the old I.F. Stone school of journalism. He still bats away at his blue Royal manual typewriter, enjoys a two-martini lunch, and works relentlessly to shake up institutions and individuals he thinks need shaking. He is clear about the issues he cares about; the corporatization of San Francisco, the state of daily journalism, and the local power company's business practices are just a few of the things he loves to hate. He recently won a local media watchdog organization's Golden Gadfly Award for lifetime achievement, and "gadfly" couldn't be a more appropriate description for Brugmann. He loves local politics and loathes newspaper chains, two facts he doesn't hide, especially when discussing New Times.

No less hard-boiled, New Times's Lacey and business partner Jim Larkin have stampeded into the '90s, expanding New Times, Inc., their growing multimillion-dollar chain of alternatives, with take-no-prisoners zeal. With more money to pay writers and less of an agenda, their six New Times outlets are attractive options for writers frustrated by the financial and often ideological limits imposed by many alternative weeklies. Lacey and Larkin also maintain a more corporate style and a less political approach to journalism. New Times papers rarely run endorsements or editorials - a philosophy that has earned the company the nickname "the Gannett corporation of the alternative press." With New Times's recent acquisition of the previously independently owned SF Weekly, two of the most influential players in weekly journalism have collided in San Francisco.

Since rumors of a Weekly sale to New Times began flying last fall, the Guardian repeatedly called New Times's approach "cookie-cutter" journalism, reporting that "the way in which the New Times does business symbolizes much that has been lost as the alternative press has matured." The feud was dramatized in a flurry of letters in the newsletter of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Brugmann wrote that the fast-expanding New Times has plans for alternative weekly world domination, suggesting that the association sponsor a seminar titled "How to Keep from Selling your Paper to a Chain." In a particularly acerbic reply, Lacey denied the charge and wrote of Brugmann: "You wrap yourself in the Constitution, the First Amendment, and a level of self-righteousness that would suck the air out of a room full of Old Testament patriarchs. If you don't stop it, you're going to suffer a spell."

The high-stakes competition between the two weeklies is a fascinating case study of today's alternative journalism. If a locally owned weekly as solid as the Guardian cannot withstand the New Times challenge, then the continued chaining of the alternative press may mean that the future of a largely unorganized movement that grew out of independence and activism in the '60s and '70s may be, ironically enough, found in large corporations.

New Times, with papers in Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Phoenix, and now San Francisco, isn't the only chain in the business. Other groups such as the Metro Newspapers, Eason Publications, Advocate Newspapers, Alternative Media, and Boston's Phoenix Media Group also own multiple papers. But none has been as aggressive in expanding its empire. The secret of the New Times's success? A consistent format, national advertising, and a clear concept of what makes a New Times paper and what doesn't. The New Times corporation may be more involved in the profit-making than head-punching business, but the company's papers do still offer top-quality investigative journalism and good arts and culture coverage. Yet New Times has never published in a city with any established competition. With the Guardian, New Times's SF Weekly clearly has its hands full.

To meet the New Times challenge, the Guardian doesn't have to change so much as continue its evolution, begun years ago in response to both an influx of younger readers and an expanding SF Weekly. Over the years, as the Weekly began making a name for itself as the king of social-cultural coverage in a social-cultural kind of town, the Guardian wisely began expanding its arts and entertainment coverage as well. The Guardian now reads like two papers - the you-can-fight-city-hall product of the '60s plus the media-savvy, hipster guide for the '90s that's currently launching a major on-line service.

So far, though, what should have been - and might still be - a good old-fashioned journalistic showdown in a town that sure could use one, has been little more than a battle of the food pages. The most notable difference between the old and new Weekly is probably the expanded restaurant coverage. With the Guardian's own beefing up of food inches in the last few months, the strategy seems to be to try to win the hearts of readers and wallets of advertisers through their stomachs.

And so as New Times digs into its new turf and the Guardian battens down its hatches, it's anybody's guess whether readers will see a fiery journalistic competition fought with great stories and breakneck reportage, or if the battle will be nothing more than an expensive food fight.

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