The paper has also become increasingly known for its local political coverage, due in no small part to the addition of columnist Don Bauder to the staff. Bauder become financial editor and columnist for the daily "San Diego Union" paper in 1973. When the "Union" and rival "Tribune" merged in the early 1990s, he remained at that post; in 1995, he was named senior columnist at the "Union-Tribune". In 1985 and 1986, Bauder wrote "Captain Money and the Golden Girl", a book about a local San Diego Ponzi scheme which stayed on the "L.A. Times" best-seller list for more than two months. He retired from the "U-T" in March 2003 and began writing his weekly column for the "Reader" in April 2003. He started his blog Scam Diego in September 2007, regularly engaging so many local readers that the comment section frequently racks up to a hundred or more comment posts for each blog post. Bauder announced his retirement in September 2018.