Singleton Knows the Way to San Jose: Plans to Buy House There

By: E&P Staff William Dean Singleton, CEO of the MediaNews Group, "intends to make a showcase of The San Jose Mercury News," the newspaper he is in the process of buying, "as a kind of laboratory for how to meld print with the Web," according to an article in Monday's New York Times.

Times reporter Katharine Seelye adds that he is "so excited about the prospects that he plans to buy a home in the Bay Area, while keeping his primary residence in Denver."

MediaNews is purchasing the Knight Ridder paper from McClatchy in a handoff.

"All the issues we're dealing with as an industry happened first in San Jose and are more dramatic in San Jose," Singleton said in the Times profile. "And if you begin to find solutions to the dramatic changes that are going on there, you've found them for all newspapers."

Singleton is known for taking editors on retreats to one of his Colorado ranches. Among other activities, they witness skits about the newspaper biz. This year's skit, Seelye writes, featured Singleton in a turban, portraying a swami, as his editors sang fresh lyrics to "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" ("Writers here/are thinking fast/of parking cars/and pumping gas").

But Singleton said he had no plans to reduce the staff there.