The Chronicle and Mercury News offered different explanations this morning about the future relationship between Hearst Corp. and MediaNews, now that Hearst is a shareholder of MediaNews. MediaNews chairman Dean Singleton was quoted by the Merc (the paper he’s buying with Hearst’s help) as saying, “… inside the Bay Area they’re the enemy. They’re the big Kahuna, the metro daily we all have to compete with.” The Hearst-owned Chron, in a front page graphic, said: “The companies that are the dominant competitors in the Bay Area newspaper market now become partners. Antitrust laws limit the ways the companies will be able to cooperate locally, but the two sides could find ways to work together in some areas of their businesses. The moves could be an acknowledgement that a newspaper’s fundamental competition is not other newspapers, but instead other media.”