MediaNews CEO William Dean Singleton doesn’t own the San Jose Mercury News yet but he has big plans for its future as an example of how print and the web can mesh.  He told the NYT: “All the issues we’re dealing with as an industry happened first in San Jose and are more dramatic in San Jose. And if you begin to find solutions to the dramatic changes that are going on there, you’ve found them for all newspapers.”
Singleton, you may recall, is a firm believer in making the web pay, or, more technically, getting paid for news on the web. He doesn’t go into detail here beyond ads being too cheap and a mention of plans to work with print and online companies including Yahoo and Google. The story is more about Singleton as mogul in the making, including writing about MediaNews as though the Knight Ridder/McClatchy acquisitions are final and it’s already the 4th largest U.S. newspaper chain.
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