Newspaper war may offer lessons for Hawaii.(Brief Article)

The newly reconstituted San Francisco Examiner proudly displays its motto, "Keeping San Francisco a two-newspaper town," at the top of Page 1.

After nearly becoming extinct in the last year, the once-dominant evening daily has been spun off from a joint operating agreement, or JOA, and emerged in late November as a privately owned -- albeit subsidized -- morning competitor to the massive San Francisco Chronicle.

The parallels between the San Francisco and Honolulu newspapers have aroused substantial interest here -- including the question whether an independent Honolulu Star-Bulletin can survive against the much larger Honolulu Advertiser, the morning daily purchased by Gannett Co. Inc. in 1993.

Speculation over whether Honolulu still will be a "two-newspaper town" has been a major topic at holiday gatherings of business-people throughout the state, especially since Canadian David Black, the …