MediaNews Group, owner of 13 daily newspapers in the Bay Area, says it will no longer release financial information to the public, such as its quarterly earnings or the compensation of its top executives including CEO Dean Singleton (left).

MediaNews isn’t a public company and wasn’t required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to post such information. Most of its stock is held by Singleton or the family of Chairman Richard Scudder (right). But bondholders had previously wanted the information posted in the same way that public companies report their finances to shareholders.

Last week, MediaNews reached an agreement with its bondholders to stop posting such information and instead provide it directly to lenders.

The move comes a month after the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s put MediaNews on its CreditWatch status, saying it was concerned the highly leveraged company would violate the terms of its loans because of declining profits.

Here’s a link to the SEC filing announcing the change, and this is the Rocky Mountain News’s take on it.