For example, the Alameda Newspaper Group in suburban San Francisco in the mid-1990s had a central newsroom in Pleasanton, California, that did all the copy editing, layout and page makeup for five daily papers. Singleton was a pioneer in "clustering": cutting jobs at individual newspapers and consolidating functions at a hub near a cluster of newspapers. The company owned KTVA, a CBS affiliate in Anchorage, Alaska, from March 2000 to October 2012, and radio stations in Texas. It operated 56 daily newspapers in 12 states, with combined daily and Sunday circulation of about 2.4 million and 2.7 million, respectively. Ultimately, it became one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States. In 1987, the company made its first major acquisition: the Denver Post. The company began to purchase small local newspapers that were undergoing financial troubles. They incorporated MediaNews Group in 1985, with Singleton as CEO and Scudder as chairman. īased in Denver, Colorado, Scudder and Singleton purchased their first newspaper in 1983. Singleton had begun his career as a reporter when he was 15, for a small-town Texas newspaper and subsequently became the president of Albritton Communications, a newspaper conglomerate in Texas. Scudder ran the Newark (New Jersey) News, a newspaper founded by his grandfather. Both had experience in the American newspaper industry. MediaNews Group was founded by Richard Scudder and William Dean Singleton. The MediaNews Group logo, which still appears on print newspapers.