MediaNews Group buys Pioneer Press

MediaNews Group Inc., publisher of the Denver Post, and Hearst Corp. agreed to buy four newspapers, including the Pioneer Press, from McClatchy Co. for $1 billion.

MediaNews, based in Denver, will get the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times, McClatchy said today in a statement distributed by PR Newswire. Hearst, based in New York, will buy the Pioneer Press and the Monterey Herald in California, and trade them to MediaNews for assets outside of the Bay Area of California. William Dean Singleton, the CEO of MediaNews, owns papers that include the Detroit News and the Denver Post. He has a mixed record with big-city newspapers.

In years past he has shut down newspapers in Texas including the Houston Post, and he took the Long Beach Press-Telegram through deep cost cutting after he acquired that paper in the late 1990s. In his more recent big-city acquisitions in Denver and Detroit, he has honored union contracts and kept the operations mostly intact.

No mention of the new owner's opinion on "hobby columnists."