House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is urging the US Justice Department to relax its antitrust rules in a move that could signal a plan to merge the San Francisco Chronicle with the Oakland Tribune and its sister papers, the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times. The Chron has been losing more than $50 million a year and its owners, the Hearst Corporation, have indicated they want to sell the paper. But any merger between the Chron and its MediaNews-owned rivals in the Bay Area would likely face an antitrust problem with the federal DOJ.
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