Back in the early 1990s, Dean Singleton predicted that ultimately there would be just three newspaper companies left standing, and he intended his MediaNews Group to be one of them.

It was an audacious prediction, because at the time, after a decade of wheeling, dealing and sometimes ruthless management, MediaNews Group still consisted of just a dozen newspapers, and the company’s board meetings, as he was fond of saying, “could be held in the front seat of a pickup truck.” But Singleton often repeated his prediction of industry consolidation, and it was the driver behind MediaNews’s growth into the second largest newspaper company (in terms of weekday circulation) over the past 15 years. Today MediaNews has 54 daily newspapers with a total of 2.4 million weekday circulation*.

MediaNews’s growth was accomplished not only through acquisitions but through innovative regional partnerships such as the California Newspaper Partnership, and was paid for through a complex and ever-changing leverage structure put together by the financial wizardry of Singleton’s associate Joseph “Jody” Lodovic IV.

But over the past few years, opportunities for Singleton to pursue his vision came to a halt. MediaNews could not outrun the ticking clock of debt accumulation; revenues plummeted; newspaper values tumbled; and lenders threatened foreclosure. Lodovic engineered a strategic and very quick bankruptcy that wiped out $765 million in debt by placing nearly all of the company’s stock in the hands of the former bondholders. Remarkably, the bankruptcy reorganization left him and Singleton in charge and with a small equity stake, plus the opportunity to earn back an equity position up to 20 percent. They also had theoretical control in the form of the power to appoint a majority of the board.

It was an unusual outcome — in other major newspaper bankruptcies, the lenders have imposed new management. For example, there have already been several changes at the top in Tribune’s ongoing bankruptcy process; at Freedom Communications, longtime chief Burl Osborne was replaced by Mitchell Stern, whose background includes CEO stints at Fox Television Stations, Inc. and Direct TV; at the Philadelphia Media Network, the publisher of the Inquirer and Daily News, Greg Osberg, a veteran of Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, was handed the reins; and at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Michael Klingensmith, a longtime Time Inc. executive, became CEO following the paper’s emergence from bankruptcy.

And then there is Journal Register Company, which emerged from bankruptcy in August 2009 and was once known as one of the most rapacious of publishing firms. “Tell me a Jelenic story,” Singleton would ask new refugees from Journal Register hired by one of his papers, referring to the sometimes ludicrous anecdotes of skinflint budget management attributed to Journal Register CEO Robert Jelenic and his lieutenant, CFO Jean Clifton. But under its post-bankruptcy CEO, John Paton, Journal Register Company has become a forward-thinking, innovative organization with a digital-enterprise management style, and has even instituted a profit-sharing plan which was on track, as of October, to make a substantial year-end payout.

So given that the normal pattern is for the post-bankruptcy owners to dump the old leadership team, it should not be surprising that the MediaNews creditors-turned-owners considered Singleton and Lodovic to be on probation. And it turns out that their trial period is over. On Tuesday, MediaNews announced a shakeup in which Lodovic (who has no street-level newspaper or digital operating experience, and whose financial skills were no longer relevant in the post-bankruptcy structure) was ousted and Singleton was reassigned to “executive chairman of the board” — ostensibly with strategic and deal-making responsibilities described specifically as “opportunities to optimize the company’s portfolio of properties and consolidation opportunities in the newspaper industry.”

On the surface, this looks like a way for Singleton to pursue his vision of consolidation, something he alluded to at the time MediaNews emerged from bankruptcy. But in reality, the shakeup robs him of nearly all his clout. The Singleton-Lodovic appointees to the MediaNews board are gone, replaced by new directors representing the stockholders group led by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund firm which has acquired a large, though not controlling, stake. Several interim executive positions were also filled by people related to Alden or its parent, Smith Management LLC. While Singleton may have ideas for strategic consolidations, without Lodovic he lacks the necessary financial engineering savvy, and without control of the board, he can’t make anything happen. The new title for Singleton looks and feels like a face-saving ambassadorial position.

So the question becomes, what will happen next? For clues, it is worth digging into Alden Global Capital and a web of investment cross-connections that tie it and several other hedge funds and investment banks to most of the major newspaper firms that have experienced bankruptcies in the last few years.

Consider the following list of investment banks, hedge funds and investment managers that have been reported to be involved in various bankrupt or post-bankrupt publishing companies (note, though, that because most of these are private investments by relatively secretive players, it’s not possible to know whether all of them are still involved as listed, or what their ownership percentages are):

MediaNews Group: A large stake is held by Alden Global Capital; the reorganization was led by BankAmerica and involved 116 lender-creditors.

Philadelphia Media Network (publisher of the Inquirer and Daily News): Alden Global Capital, Angelo, Gordon & Co, Credit Suisse, Citizens Bank, CIT Group.

Journal Register Company: Alden Global Capital, JPMorgan Chase.

Freedom Communications: Alden Global Capital.

Tribune Company: Alden Global Capital, Angelo, Gordon & Company, Greywolf Capital, Oak Tree Capital Management, JPMorgan Chase. (Note, in this case, the players are not on the same page yet, with Alden and others filing suit against JPMorgan and others.)

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Angelo, Gordon & Company, Credit Suisse, Wayzata Investment Partners.

Postmedia Network Inc.: The Canadian group acquired the newspaper holdings of bankrupt Canwest Global Communications Corporation with backing from Golden Tree Asset Management as well as Alden Global Media and a number of smaller investment funds. John Paton, CEO of the above-listed Journal Register Company, serves as an advisor and recruited its CEO, Paul Godfrey, a media executive who also did a stint as CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Morris Communications: The lone publisher with no apparent overlapping investors shared with the others; its principal creditor in bankruptcy was Wilmington Trust FSB. But Wilmington is a bank, and in most of these cases the banks have been flipping their holdings to the hedge funds.

Clearly, Alden is the outfit with the most skin in the game, having investments in MediaNews, Freedom, Philadelphia Media, Journal Register, Freedom, Tribune and Postmedia. (Incidentally, as a further extension of this network, JP Morgan Chase, which has been involved in the Tribune, Freedom and Journal Register reorganizations, is the largest stockholder at Gannett, with a 10.2 percent “passive” investment.)

With all these interrelationships among investors and “distressed” newspaper firms, it’s not hard to see why Dean Singleton might say that achieving some kind of “consolidation” will be a full-time job. Still, it seems unlikely that Singleton will get to pull the strings, when the money behind the interlocking investment structures is controlled by billionaire Randall Smith, Alden’s founder, who built his fortune through investments in junk bonds and distressed properties. Alden acquired most of its newspaper stakes through its Alden Global Distressed Opportunities Fund, which it launched in 2008 and which is now worth nearly $3 billion. Alden has offices in New York, Dallas, Dubai and Mumbai, along with a tax-haven presence on the Channel Island Jersey.

The tip of the iceberg of consolidation shows in rumors of a possible merger between Freedom and MediaNews. This would be of strategic value particularly in California, where MediaNews already controls about 26 percent of the newspaper market by circulation through its California Newspaper Partnership created by Singleton and Lodovic. MediaNews, Gannett and Stephens Media Group all contributed newspapers to the partnership, in which each firm holds a proportionate equity stake and profit share, but which is controlled and managed by MediaNews. Combining MediaNews and Freedom would add another 7 percent, bringing the total to 33 percent. Antitrust is unlikely to be a big hurdle, since the MediaNews and Freedom holdings compete only at territorial margins and the continuing decline in newspaper revenue and circulation is a sufficient argument for the need to consolidate.

Alden could be seeing the California opportunity not only as a chance to find additional cost savings through production efficiency, but more importantly as a way to gain revenue through market share, both in print and online. Conceivably, because of Alden’s role in Tribune, the Los Angeles Times could end up as part of the partnership as well, boosting the consortium to about half the state’s paid circulation.

This California consolidation opportunity could be used as a model for similar possibilities elsewhere. For example, in New England, a combination of MediaNews, Journal Register and Tribune would have properties in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts — totaling about 25 percent of circulation in those states, on a par with the current California partnership. On a countrywide basis, the companies in which Alden appears to have a stake and some degree of influence, as detailed above, have about 15 percent of all circulation and if fully merged, would be about 10 percent bigger than the current champion, Gannett. Gannett currently holds only about 13 percent of total circulation, and when compared with most other media such as television, cable, radio and magazines, the patchworked map of newspaper ownership and its lack of concentration of ownership both now seem outdated and inefficient. Singleton’s early vision of three principal players owning most of the newspaper landscape is increasingly likely.

But it must be done right. Strategic geographic consolidations, if operationally led (one hopes) by someone of Paton’s caliber, could be a potent force for the rejuvenation of the industry, including a renewed focus on what, after all, is the principal product and potential strength of all three companies: local journalism, along with Paton’s strong emphasis on digital-first, print-last thinking.

MediaNews’s own statement on the reorganization seems to echo this: “These measures will strengthen the company’s performance in its core markets, and continue the transformation of the business from a print-oriented newspaper company to a locally focused provider of news and information across multiple platforms.”

It’s really the last hope for the newspaper business, but a pessimistic view is possible, of course. Randall Smith, Alden’s CEO, is a shrewder and more sophisticated financial engineer than Lodovic was as Singleton’s second-in-command, and Alden’s ultimate interest is in earning a strong return on its investments, not in the future of journalism, so its strategy is at heart a financial one. And, yes, consolidation will come at the cost of jobs.

But Smith also knows that the only way to win his big bet on the future of newspapers is to turn them into nimble, modern digital news enterprises, and even Singleton (who rarely touches a computer) seems to agree.

Let’s hope they both listen to Paton, who said in a December speech:

Stop listening to newspaper people. We have had nearly 15 years to figure out the Web and as an industry we newspaper people are no good at it. No good at it at all. Want to get good at it? Then stop listening to the newspaper people and start listening to the rest of the world. And, I would point out, as we have done at JRC — put the digital people in charge — of everything.

[Update, Jan. 21: After posting this, I took note that in concurrently breaking news, Eric Schmidt of Google is handing his CEO title to Larry Page and assuming the mantle “executive chairman of the board,” the same title Dean Singleton will have. And the Google announcement talks about similar separations between the CEO’s operational, day-to-day management role, and the chairman’s strategic, dealmaking one. But that’s where the comparisons end. In Google’s case, it’s a reshuffle being done to better delineate the roles of a leadership triumvirate that is not being broken up. In the case of MediaNews, it’s a shakeup, not a reshuffle to clarify roles; Singleton will not have his accustomed lieutenants to work with; and the owners clearly want new blood to be infused in the operation. So one should not read Singleton’s reassignment as being in any way equivalent to Schmidt’s.

*Correction, Jan. 21: This post has been updated to reflect the fact that MediaNews is the second largest newspaper company in terms of weekday circulation, not the sixth as originally reported.]

Disclosure: I worked for MediaNews Group for 13 years as a publisher in its newspapers in Pittsfield and North Adams, Mass. and Brattleboro, Vt. In a previous post, I asked whether Singleton could steer MediaNews to a digital future.