The New York Times has an interesting piece on MediaNews chieftain William Dean Singleton. The man seems to be the Richard Branson of the newspaper industry. He is the man who is buying Gannett and spent $1 Billion on four of Knight Ridder's dailies.

Mr. Singleton, 54, a bantam figure with flinty blue eyes, is indeed thought of as something of a magician in the newspaper world having transformed himself from the son of a ranch hand in a tiny town in Texas to a media baron who now controls a newspaper empire that sprawls from coast to coast. He has, in a manner of speaking, sawed many of his competitors in half, only to have them hop off the table and become his partners.

His company, the privately held MediaNews based in Denver, owns 55 dailies including The Denver Post, The Detroit News, The Daily News of Los Angeles and The Berkshire Eagle, plus more than 100 nondailies. With the addition of the Knight Ridder papers The San Jose Mercury News, The Contra Costa Times and The Monterey County Herald, all in California, and The St. Paul Pioneer Press MediaNews has become the nation's fourth-biggest newspaper company, up from seventh.

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