Dean Singleton, still in charge at MediaNews Group while the owners look for a new CEO, is shooting down a report by the Guild that he plans to create a consolidated national copy desk. Guild president Bernie Lunzer got that idea during what Singleton said was a “casual phone conversation.”

After Singleton disavowed the national copy center idea, Merc editor and MNG vp of news issued this memo (posted by Romenesko):

… we have two projects going on that fly in the face of any “national” center. We have consultant Ken Harding working with editors in Denver, Salt Lake and St. Paul to figure out ways to make local news production more efficient at each paper, and just yesterday a group from BANG went to LANG [the company’s Los Angeles News Group] to exchange ideas on how we might streamline our regional desks. 

We also have some mini-regional desks around the company and may, at some point, consider more. Like most other newspaper companies, regionalization — where appropriate — seems to work well. 

Would we rule out doing something else? Nope. But the capital costs of one center and the challenges involved seem pretty daunting to me. 

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