The Bay Area’s two big newspaper companies — MediaNews and Hearst — have entered a partnership with a wireless company to distribute news on cell phones, iPhones, Palms and other mobile devices.

The companies are teaming up with Verve Wireless Inc. of Encinitas, headed by Art Howe, a 30-year newspaper veteran who who a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 at the Philadephia Inquirer for his articles on the IRS, according to MediaWeek, a trade publication which reported the deal earlier today. Here’s a press release from Verve.

Verve is already working with the AP, McClatchy, MediaGeneral and The New York Times Regional Group.

Verve is bringing both ads and news to mobile devices. Here’s a paragraph from Verve’s news release:

Small businesses from all across the country are using mobile in new and innovative ways to reach their customers.

“We have been advertising in print and online with Media General and are quite impressed with the results we have gotten from our initial mobile campaigns,” said Brent Barkin, vice president and director e-commerce for Shoe Station, a regional shoe store in the southeast with an online retail store at Shoestation.com. “We created a mobile campaign that included a text code that we added to our website and to the paper receipts for in store purchases, within minutes we were seeing responses that converted into sales.”

Verve is also providing newspapers with enhancements to their platform that automatically create a version of the publisher’s site optimized for the new Safari browser on iPhones.