In an interview with Paid Content Senior Correspondent David Kaplan, MediaNews chief executive Dean Singleton says his papers are hurting because of the economy, they need to unify print and online sales, and “AP is the best buy I know.” Singleton is also chairman of AP’s board. Here’s what Singleton says about selling auto ads in San Jose:

“If you go see a GM dealer in San Jose, you might say, ‘I’m going to sell you a full-page ad. Oh, you want to buy an online ad? I’ll get my associate to see you the day after tomorrow. Oh, you want mobile too? I’ll have to get another associate for that.’ We need to have well-trained sales people that goes to that dealer and says, ‘I have a comprehensive program to reach 80 percent of your demo and can target it down to a GM buyer.’ Selling it separately, which most of us did, didn’t work because you have the sales team trying to outflank each other. The print seller would say, ‘You don’t want online.’ The same would happen from the web salesman. Plus, if you go to the decision maker and say, ‘I’m going to give you a comprehensive program to market your business,’ you got a much better chance of getting face time if you have one person trying to make an appointment rather than three. Consolidated print and digital sales is the future and that’s what we’re doing at all our papers.”

As for AP, Singleton doesn’t understand why an editor would cut the wire service. “It’s 5 percent of my newsroom budget, 35 percent of my newsroom content. And they just cut my rates more than 10 percent. Sounds like a deal to me.”