William Dean Singleton

William Dean Singleton (born August 1, 1951) is an American newspaper executive. He is the founder and executive board chairman of MediaNews Group, the fourth-largest newspaper company in the United States in terms of circulation, with 53 daily papers totaling 2.7 million subscriptions daily and 3 million on Sunday. He is also a former chairman of the board of directors of the Associated Press. Additionally, he has been publisher of a number of MediaNews' dailies, including the Denver Post, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Detroit News. He is a cattle rancher, owning several ranches.

Singleton was born in Graham, Texas. He began his newspaper career at the age of 15 as a part-time reporter in Graham and bought his first newspaper at age 21.

Singleton has built his newspaper company through the acquisition of newspapers. He closed several of those newspapers, such as the Fort Worth Press and the Houston Post. He also bought the Denver Post and the Oakland Tribune where he laid off staff, he said, to increase efficiency. In the latest round of cuts, the daily Oakland Tribune will become a weekly.

Singleton was a pioneer in "clustering"—developing groups of newspapers that centralized a variety of functions, including production, ad sales, business operations and, in some cases, editorial. An example of this was the Alameda Newspaper Group in suburban San Francisco, where in the mid-1990s, a central newsroom in Pleasanton, California, did all the copy editing, layout and page makeup for five daily papers. Upon acquiring the diverse group of papers, Singleton consolidated several news sections (such as sports and features) to one local office away in order to streamline work.

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