Friendly news

The NYTimes profiles Dean Singleton, who runs the “fastest-growing newspaper company of the last two decades,” MediaNews Group. To fund growth, Singleton slashes staffs and once “upheld the firing of a reporter who had failed to file a news story consisting of an advertiser’s news release verbatim, and instead added accurate details that wound up making the advertiser look bad.” Singleton oversees 46 daily newspapers and 81 nondaily newspapers.