I have no idea if it'll be any good, but I don't think there's necessarily any reason to think that the NYT expanding into a local edition for San Francisco will be a net negative development. Local newspapers, by accounts the Chronicle especially, have squandered their local monopolies so badly (nice trick!) that another player should be welcomed by the people. Right now people generally have a choice of one daily with relatively sparse local coverage supplemented by wire stories for most of the national news, or something with more comprehensive national news like the NYT and zero local news.
I doubt the NYT's local edition will be as comprehensive in its coverage as newspapers like the Chronicle once were in theirs, but we're long past those days anyway.
