Master of cluster, consolidate and cut

In BusinessWeeks's "Newspapers' Unlikely Hero", Singleton is said to have become a crusader for efficiency and collaboration as a way to save the industry.

"These days, Singleton has plenty of admirers—some of them in surprising places. Robert N. Giles, curator of Harvard University's Nieman Foundation, says "His reputation has been enhanced, and it has been enhanced out of performance. His bigger papers are doing well journalistically." Not all journalists agree with that. "He's shrewd. But you have to have shrewdness and journalistic passion to create really outstanding journalism, and I wish I saw more journalistic passion there," says Larry Jinks, a former publisher of the San Jose Mercury News who is on the board of the McClatchy newspaper chain."

Read it. Then tell us what you think.