Dean Singleton, owner of papers such as the Oakland Tribune, San Mateo County Times and Marin Independent Journal, met last week with Knight Ridder execs to discuss buying the newspaper chain, according to a Mercury News story by Pete Carey. If Singleton’s ANG newspapers in the Bay Area (daily combined circ of 297,952) were combined with KR’s Bay Area papers (526,418), they’d surround and dominate the 512,000-circulation San Francisco Chronicle. However, it would create an interesting situation in San Mateo, where KR owns the San Mateo Daily News (a free daily spawned by the Palo Alto Daily News) and Singleton has the San Mateo County Times (a traditional home-delivery broadsheet). Would both remain open? Would they be combined? Same questions would come up in the East Bay, where both companies compete head-to-head.