Saturday's Daily Breeze ran this photo of Dean Singleton addressing the staff, along with a main story about the day's big news in the South Bay.

Including the Breeze within its fold gives MediaNews' LANG a Los Angeles-area circulation of 560,000 to 570,000, which is the sixth-largest newspaper advertising buy in the nation, Singleton said. "We believe that this transaction will bring a lot of new revenue to the Daily Breeze through its association with the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, both in national and major account advertising, and other sources of cooperative efforts of advertising," Singleton said.

As for the Breeze's content under MediaNews, the paper will "become even more intensely local because that's what we do have to offer that others in the media don't have to offer," Singleton said. He added that the Breeze will cooperate with the Press-Telegram and other LANG papers to strengthen the editorial and business sides.

Singleton is known for buying financially troubled newspapers and making them profitable.

"I think one of the things that could be said in an era when some people have lost faith in the newspaper industry as a way to make money, he is making money," said Bryce Nelson, journalism professor at USC's Annenberg School of Communication. "From a standpoint of a highly competitive capitalistic survival, he is a success so far."

MediaNews has used an aggressive strategy of clustering newspapers in areas such as Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, and the Bay Area, to share resources and offer advertisers special deals for regional exposure.

"(By purchasing) the Daily Breeze, he's basically surrounded the Los Angeles Times (and) the Riverside Press-Enterprise. He's surrounded the Chronicle in San Francisco," said Nelson, who served as director of Annenberg's journalism school from 1984-88.

The Breeze website has video of Singleton's talk. The paper also runs a piece on new publisher Liz Gaier:

No stranger to the South Bay, Gaier worked for 10 years in the advertising sales department of the Breeze. She left in 2000 to work at a newspaper in Ventura County before joining the MediaNews Group a year later.

In addition to her role as publisher, Gaier serves as the company's senior vice president for new business development. She said her focus will be on building revenue, while continuing to devote resources to covering news in the South Bay. "Editorially, the product needs to remain local," she said. "We need to speak to our readers."

[snip]

The mother of three children, Gaier is the daughter of a newspaper publisher. Three of her siblings are also in the news business.

Previously:
Daily Breeze sale done

Photo: Scott Varley/Daily Breeze