The oddest part? Mr. Manchester and the chief executive, John T. Lynch, who also owns part of the paper, are completely open about their motives.

“We make no apologies,” Mr. Lynch said by telephone on Friday. “We are doing what a newspaper ought to do, which is to take positions. We are very consistent — pro-conservative, pro-business, pro-military — and we are trying to make a newspaper that gets people excited about this city and its future.”

He added: “We totally respect the journalistic integrity of our paper and there is a clear line of demarcation between our editorials and our news. Our editor, Jeff Light, calls the shots.” (Mr. Manchester was traveling in Europe and unavailable for comment.)

Others in San Diego are not so sure. Rob Davis is a senior writer at Voice of San Diego, a Web site covering the city, and has watched as The U-T has become a player rather than observer in civic events. He points out that when officials at the Port of San Diego, a public agency that oversees the land in question, did not warm to The U-T’s big development plan (which it unveiled on its front page), the agency was soon the subject of investigative pieces about its finances. “The U-T is an important institution in this city and you want to see it succeed,” Mr. Davis said, “but there is a very real fear here that it will not be advocating for the public’s good, but the owner’s good instead.”

Many of us grew up in towns where the daily paper was in bed with civic leaders, but the shared interest was generally expressed on the editorial page. Occasionally, appropriate lines of inquiry would be suspiciously ignored in coverage, but the news pages were just that, news.