A few years ago, MediaNews Group was pushing the Internet as the future of its company. It looks like chief executive Dean Singleton has had a change of heart. Morgan McGinley of the independently owned New London, Conn., paper The Day, quotes Singleton at a recent National Conference of Editorial Writers as saying:

“Some say newspapers have no future. Others say that print newspapers have no future, but that a pot of gold is waiting at the end of the rainbow for those who develop the right online newspaper models. Count me as one who believes that if there is no future for print newspapers, there is no future for newspapers. …

“There is not enough Internet revenue available to newspapers to support the overall mission of providing news and opinion to the customers we serve. … If print is not a part of our future, then there isn’t enough revenue online to provide that future.”

”Print must be preserved to provide us any future. And it can be.”

McGinley observed that this is a “somewhat surprising message from a publisher who has chopped editors, reporters and other employees by the hundreds from news organizations his MediaNews Group has acquired.”