Paper Wars

The battle between the Dallas Times Herald and its Big D rival, the Morning News, has been a rough, old-fashioned newspaper war, but last week one side in effect surrendered. The owner of the Times Herald, the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co., agreed to sell the paper for $110 million to MediaNews Group, a Woodbury, N.J., holding company with some three dozen small and medium-size papers.

Bought by the Times Mirror Co. in 1970, the Times Herald had by 1980 almost overtaken the Morning News in ads and circulation. But then the paper ran into management troubles. It dipped into the red during the first quarter of this year, while the tightly run News jumped to a formidable circulation lead (390,275 vs. 244,629). The News's owner, A.H. Belo Corp., could rightly claim victory, but perhaps the biggest winner was MediaNews President and CEO William Dean Singleton, 34. As an 18-year-old, Singleton had been turned down for a job by the Times Herald. Said he last week: "I figured the only way to work there was to buy the place."