SINGLETON

subscribers weren’t jumping ship, but the cost was so low that it gave the News a circulation boost.

“It made us nervous. We believed we needed to maintain our circulation advantage to win,” Singleton said.

Also, advertisers didn’t want to duplicate their efforts by paying twice to reach the same reader. The Post eventually matched the penny-a-day price. But then the Rocky offered a second and third year of the paper for a penny, effectively valuing one paper at one-third of a cent.

“While the Post never lost money during that period, our profits dramatically declined. But the Rocky, in their last year of (independent) operation, lost $25 million. They bet the farm on penny newspapers, and when that didn’t work, they waved the white flag,” Singleton said.

The two newspapers formed a joint-operating agreement in 2000, in which the Rocky’s owner, E.W. Scripps, paid $60 million to Media-news.

With the war ended and profits on the rise again, Singleton embarked on building the great paper he had always envisioned, trading his trademark frugality for a spending spree unseen in The Post’s history. Neither paper was located in a building that could accommodate the other’s staff, so the partnership built a new, 11-story headquarters just north of Civic Center park and upgraded the printing presses.

Singleton, long criticized for making deep staff cuts at the papers he acquired, wanted to grow The Post’s newsroom from the 187 people in place just before the JOA agreement to 310, which was reached briefly before everything turned.

“We invested collectively $255 million of capital for the long-term future, not realizing the long-term future was going to change quickly,” Singleton said.

Through the first half of 2006, the JOA arrangement worked well. That same year, Medianews went on a $1 billion spending spree, acquiring papers in northern California and other markets as revenues began a slide that continues to this day.

A severe downturn

The worst recession since the Great Depression, which decimated home and car sales and threw millions out of work, didn’t spare the publishing industry. But the digital revolution put even more damaging forces into play. Classified ads, a category that radio and television couldn’t raid, moved online quickly and never came back. National retailers found it easier to reach out directly to their customers, making print ads less important. One by one, advertising sources considered unassailable went away.

By 2008, Scripps and Medianews realized Denver couldn’t support two newspapers. As negotiations were underway on what the future would look like, Scripps decided to close the News 55 days shy of its 150th anniversary, leaving The Post as the sole survivor.

“We miss the Rocky for a lot of reasons. But if the Rocky had not closed, there was a clear danger that both papers would close,” Singleton said.

When the books were opened, they showed Scripps fought with a surprising tenacity. Since the Cincinnati media company purchased the News in 1926, the paper had returned a profit in only six years, and yet it fought on.

Borrowing heavily ahead of the recession badly wounded Medianews. In 2010, the country’s secondlargest newspaper group struck a deal with all of its bankers and nearly all of its bondholders on a restructuring plan to exchange debt for equity and move quickly through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Singleton said the goal was to take the value of Medianews shares from $5 a piece to $15 within three years, making creditors whole. But three months after debt was swapped for equity, New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital began offering shareholders $15, then $20 and then $25 a share and higher, Singleton said.

“They got in at what they believed was a good price, and it was more than what our former lenders thought was a good price. That is capitalism,” Singleton said.

In November 2011, Singleton stepped down as CEO of Medianews Group but continued on as chairman and as publisher of The Denver Post and The Salt Lake Tribune. But over time, the toll multiple sclerosis was taking on his health made even those duties too much, he said. In November 2013, he retired as chairman and as publisher, ending the Singleton era

“I once told people I wanted The Post to be one of the 10 best newspapers in America, and I think we achieved that,” Singleton said.

He doesn’t deny the accusations that publishers and editors in the company levied against him over the years of favoring The Denver Post and The Salt Lake Tribune, where he was publisher for 14 years.

“I plead guilty to that,” he said. “I lived in Denver and had a home in Salt Lake City, and I knew those communities better than I did the other newspapers. We did spend more money on news holes and editorial staff in both Denver and Salt Lake City than we did everywhere else. And It paid off.”