Jan 17, 2009

Consolidation moves up north

MediaNews is taking steps to consolidate management at some of its Northern California newspapers - which could be a sign of newsroom consolidation to come. The publisher of the Chico Enterprise-Record and Oroville Mercury-Register lost his job today, as did the publisher of the Times-Herald in Vallejo. The former will be replaced by the publisher of the Reporter in Vacaville and the Woodland Daily Democrat, and the latter will be replaced by the publisher of MediaNews' Northern Community Newspapers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

who wants to start a singleton out of business pool...his empire will look a lot different in several months. it is to bad a lot of good talent will go down the tubes and down the tubes without a parachute that he most likely has carved out.

Anonymous said...

Lest we forget:

"From what I’ve been reading, the situation is worse in the MediaNews landscape than other places. It was precipitated by Wall Street, which waterboarded Knight-Ridder until it panicked and put itself up for sale and dissolution, which tempted a smaller McClatchy to get greedy and develop a critical case of dyspepsia. To get relief, it put some of its new properties on the auction block, and Dean Singleton, who didn’t have enough toys in his playroom, snapped at the bait..."
- Wesley G. Hughes, editor, Sun San Bernardino.

... who actually pushed this company over a cliff:

"Those who oppose relaxation of the antiquated newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule usually predict that mass, national consolidation of the newspaper and broadcast industries will happen if the rule is changed. I believe those predictions are unfounded. Instead, relaxation of the rules will result in dramatically improved information flow in each local market—market by market."
-William Dean Singelton, testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee about the benefits of eliminating the FCC’s ban on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership.

http://commerce.senate.gov/pdf/singleton051303.pdf

"He's leveraged up the (expletive,)" Anonymous MediaNews Employee, discussing Singelton three years ago.