reader wants to sue Dean Singleton.

[enigami]

interesting case here out of San Francisco: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/17/BAG3SON64L7.DTL&type=printable

I don't think this guy stands a snowball's chance in hell of winning, but ooh, the ramifications if he did...

 

[Piotr Rasputin]

In Southern California, the Orange County Register, LA Times, Riverside Press-Enterprise and Ventura County Star remain independent of each other. Dean Singleton's company owns the other eight daily newspapers in the area stretching among those four newspapers.

In Northern California, the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner are separate. The Examiner is a free paper owned by Anschutz. I'm not sure as to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, maybe someon can help me here. Dean Singleton's company pretty much owns the rest.

I can understand why a reader would really be in an uproar over the NoCal arrangement, since the Chron's owner has engaged in a business deal/transaction with the owner of all the other papers. If I'm not mistaken, there is a legend of a situation where the LA Times people helped front the money for MediaNews' purchase of the LA Daily News.

Business-wise, it is logical to question the level of competition and continued quality of product when two rival companies make deals with each other.

 

[Birdscribe]

In Southern California, the Orange County Register, LA Times, Riverside Press-Enterprise and Ventura County Star remain independent of each other. Dean Singleton's company owns the other eight daily newspapers in the area stretching among those four newspapers.

In Northern California, the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner are separate. The Examiner is a free paper owned by Anschutz. I'm not sure as to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, maybe someon can help me here. Dean Singleton's company pretty much owns the rest.

I can understand why a reader would really be in an uproar over the NoCal arrangement, since the Chron's owner has engaged in a business deal/transaction with the owner of all the other papers. If I'm not mistaken, there is a legend of a situation where the LA Times people helped front the money for MediaNews' purchase of the LA Daily News.

Business-wise, it is logical to question the level of competition and continued quality of product when two rival companies make deals with each other.

The NY Times Corp. owns the Press-Democrat. And the Antelope Valley Press is also an independently owned daily in the greater LA market.

Yes, PR, you're correct about the LA Times lending a huge assist to Singleton in his purchase of the LA Daily News. They did this to prevent an owner committed more to journalism than profit-sucking opportunism from stepping in and actually providing serious competition.

Here's a heaping dose of irony that could apply to Clint Black's case. Back in the late 60s/early 70s, Times Mirror owned the San Bernardino Sun. They were forced to sell it to Gannett on antitrust grounds.

What's going on in NoCal -- especially on the East Bay, where Lean Dean owns both the Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times -- could be construed as an antitrust violation by any rational definition of the term.

In today's regulatory climate, however, it's just "economies of scale."

 

[Left_Coast]

What's going on in NoCal was so predictable when the sale of KR was going down and what would happen if Lean Dean got the papers. His track record speaks for itself. He obliterated the SoCal papers into a shadow of their former selves.

Bird is right about the LAT fronting some money for the purchase not just of the LADN, but also the rest of the SoCal papers that became LANG. And Gannett has a stake in it as well.

The guy is horrible when it comes to journalism. Again, just look what his track record is.

 

[SoCalDude]

I was at a SoCal suburban paper for one month when it was sold to Singleton. The pay was already so low that it fit his mold and he didn't make us do his fire-rehire-at-lower-pay trick. I was there 14 horrible months before stepping up to where I am now.
When I left, he tried to charge me a fee to transfer my 401k. I had to call his HR head in Denver and told her that was ****ing ridiculous. She said, OK, we won't charge you this time, but don't tell anybody.

 

[MileHigh]

Wow. That didn't happen to me after I left what became a Singleton property. That's just insane.

 

[SoCalDude]

Totally insane ... I thought about pursuing some kind of labor complaint, but I was happy to be out of there so I just let it pass.
My best Singleton story was, couple of days after he bought the paper, he was cruising around the building. Nobody knew who he was. There was a woman in the break room looking at the selections in a vending machine. He came up behind her and asked, "How's the food here." Without turning around to see who was talking to her, she said, "It's crap, just like everything else in this building."