Dean Singleton, MediaNews chief executive, tells The New York Times that in the long run, California — particularly the Bay Area — is the place to be. “I have no doubt that The Mercury News’s revenue base will perform better when things turn around than almost any newspaper in the country … California has always been bigger than life, in the upturns and the downturns … This thing will turn around.”

The Times described the Merc this way:

The Mercury News, the Silicon Valley paper that was long considered one of the nation’s best, began shrinking years before MediaNews took over, under the now-dissolved Knight Ridder chain. The news staff, from a high of more than 400 people early in this decade, has fallen below 150, producing a much slimmer, more locally focused paper.

It no longer has a movie reviewer. The science and book sections are gone. Most national and international news comes from wire services. …

“And this building is pretty rundown,” [Editor Dave Butler] said, waving his arm across a sprawling newsroom where some employees are surrounded by empty desks. The dinginess is made plain on his unadorned office walls, where lighter-colored rectangles show where pictures used to hang.