California Newspapers Partnership

William Dean Singleton, founder of MediaNews, pushed for the partnership in 1999 as part of his "clustering" strategy of newspaper ownership — owning groups of newspapers in a geographic area for economies of scale. For example, he had acquired five dailies in Northern California in the mid-1990s and centralized their operations into one copy and layout desk, and one team for special sections such as sports and features.[2]

In an effort to achieve efficiencies on a larger scale, Singleton offered to pool its Bay Area papers — the Alamedia Newspaper Group — and the Los Angeles Daily News in a partnership with the Ontario, California, assets of Donrey Media Group (now called Stephens). A year after forming the partnership, the duo were joined by Gannett, which contributed the San Bernardino Sun and the Marin Independent Journal.

MediaNews entered into similar partnerships in New Mexico-Texas and Pennsylvania with Gannett, and in Colorado with E.W. Scripps Company. In 2015, Gannett gave its stake in CNP to MediaNews successor Digital First Media in exchange for the New Mexico-Texas and Pennsylvania and cash.[3]

As MediaNews remains the largest shareholder in the California Newspaper Partnership, the partnership effectively functions as a subsidiary of Denver-based MediaNews Group, and a parent to MediaNews' three newspaper clusters in California, the Bay Area News Group, Los Angeles Newspaper Group and its Northern California holdings. Those operational clusters include a combination of newspapers owned by the partnership and newspapers wholly owned by MediaNews.