Forget About Art and Cars

By Laurence Zuckerman

Most staffers on the ailing Denver Post (circ. 227,000) had heard the rumors that their paper was for sale. So when the announcement came last week that the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co. had sold the paper for $95 million, few were shocked. What did surprise them was the buyer: William Dean Singleton, 36, a plump, boyish-looking Texan whose newspaper empire only a year ago consisted largely of small-town dailies.

Though Singleton may not yet rank with Gannett or Knight-Ridder, he is rapidly developing a knack for picking up troubled metropolitan papers at bargain prices. Only four days earlier, Singleton and his partner, Richard Scudder,73, had bought the Houston Post (circ. 309,000) for $150 million. Last year the two men made their first big acquisition, paying $110 million for the Dallas Times Herald (circ. 247,000), another Times Mirror paper. Through a complex web of companies under the umbrella of MediaNews Group Inc., Singleton and Scudder have amassed 56 newspapers (including 29 dailies), making their chain the eleventh largest in the country. "Some people collect art and cars," says Singleton. "We like to collect papers."

Singleton became hooked on newsprint at 15, when he worked as a part-time reporter for his hometown paper, the Graham (Texas) Leader. After dropping out of college, he started a weekly in the Texas Panhandle before attempting to revive the Fort Worth Press. The paper fizzled, so Singleton went to work for Joe Allbritton, the Texas financier and publisher. Singleton's specialty: acquiring sick papers and nursing them back to health through radical budget surgery.

In 1983 Singleton and Scudder, former publisher of the now defunct Newark News, bought their first property, the daily Gloucester County (N.J.) Times (circ. 30,000). Since then the pair has acquired other small papers in California, Texas and New Jersey. Scudder supplied most of the capital along with Media General, a Virginia-based firm that holds a minority interest in some 20 of the chain's papers. While Singleton plays Mr. Outside, Scudder prefers a low profile, taking an active interest in the editorial side of the business and occasionally penning his own editorials.

Denver staffers worry about Singleton's reputation as a cost cutter and fear that he might soften the paper's journalistic edge. Introducing himself last week to Post employees, James Barnhill, the folksy new publisher, said he hopes to put out a "newspaper that makes people feel good in the morning." Singleton, however, gets passing grades in Dallas. "The nightmare we all worried about never came," says Times Herald Reporter Jim Henderson. Nearly all the 156 Times employees who were laid off (out of a total of 1,350) came from the business side. Editor David Burgin has abandoned trying to match the rival Morning News story for story. Instead, he concentrates resources on local and state news, including scoops on the S.M.U. football scandal.

Though the Houston Post turned a profit last year, the Denver paper may have lost as much as $10 million. Both trail their more profitable rivals, the Rocky Mountain News and the Houston Chronicle, in circulation, while the oil- battered economies of both cities have dried up advertising dollars. For all of Singleton's love for newspapers, he may have taken on too big a challenge. Says Newspaper Analyst John Morton: "It's a daring risk. The future of junior newspapers is not bright."

With reporting by Richard Woodbury/Dallas