The parent company of another major newspaper chain, MediaNews Group, has filed for bankruptcy protection in order to complete a debt-for-equity swap with its major lenders.

But CEO William Dean Singleton was upbeat. Here’s an interesting comment buried down at the end of a Denver Post story:

Speaking last September at the National Conference of Editorial Writers, Singleton noted that motives for newspaper ownership have shifted over the years, from those who wanted to cover news and write opinion to those who came to view newspapers as purely financial investments. Now banks are becoming “accidental” stockholders.

“I would submit that the next chapter will be ownership by those who want to own newspapers,” Singleton said. “Count me in that group. The world will have come full circle.”

Singleton’s comment certainly seems to apply to Star-Bulletin owner David Black, another newspaper owner who is more interested in owning newspapers than maximizing profits.

Editor & Publisher is back after being sold to California publisher Duncan McIntosh Co.

E&P’s new owners announced plans to publish a February print issue and continue the magazine’s monthly print publication schedule. Online reporting on its Web site, editorandpublisher.com, began immediately upon the close of the transaction Thursday.

Other media news…did you notice the flap over the Washington Post’s news deal with a billionaire who wants to dismantle Social Security? Apparently the Post is publishing stories produced by “Fiscal Times”, a project of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a move that first the drew the ire of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and soon by media watchdogs.

A longer story by William Greider, appearing in The Nation, tracks Peterson’s big-money attempt to remake his views as “news”.

Greider writes:

With his great wealth, Peterson could have also bought a newspaper to publish his dispatches, but he did better than that. He hooked up with the Washington Post, which has agreed to “jointly produce content focusing on the budget and fiscal issues.” (This media scandal was first uncovered by economist Dean Baker.) The newspaper is thus compromising its own integrity. It’s like buying political propaganda from a Washington lobbyist, then printing it in the news columns as if it was just another news story. Shame on the Post, my old newspaper. I predict a big stink like the one that greeted the Post when its publisher decided to hold pay-for-access “salons” for corporate biggies.

Media Watchdog FAIR is criticizing the CEO of the Freedom Forum, which bills itself as a champion for the First Amendment, because he also serves as a director of Corrections Corporation of America, which has been lobbying hard to defeat proposed federal legislation that would force public disclosure of key information about private prisons. It’s an interesting read.

And two local moves of note–The Star-Bulletin is losing deputy city editor Chuck Parker, who moves to KITV later this month, while Jeannie Mariani-Belding’s, editorial and opinion editor at the Advertiser, is leaving “to pursue new career opportunities“. Her move comes after a discrimination lawsuit disclosed a number of unflattering or controversial statements attributed to Mariani-Belding. The Advertiser successfully defended itself in court, but the case may have put an end to Mariani-Belding’s ambition to be named publisher.