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The existing Bay Area News Group (BANG) newspapers titles will continue to be published after the changes take effect ... under two consolidated mastheads. The Contra Costa Times, Valley Times, San Ramon Valley Times, Tri-Valley Herald, San Joaquin Herald, and East County Times will be branded under The Times masthead, while the Oakland Tribune, Alameda Times-Star, Daily Review, Argus and West County Times will be rebranded as the East Bay Tribune.

Old marketing rule: Never throw away a viable brand without a darned good reason. MediaNews is tossing 13 and trying to establish two new ones.

Obvious conclusion: the old ones were worthless ... to the point where it wasn't even worth the effort to try and salvage even one of them.

Patch.com’s Lance Howland hears that almost 50 people on the editorial side will lose their jobs.

Conclusion: This is better than the first reported. They are also cutting back on the one thing that differentiates a home town news rag from its competition ... home town news.

According to Wikipedia, "In January, 2010, Affiliated Media, parent of MediaNews, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The MediaNews creditors then removed Media News president Joseph Lodovic and its chairman, William Dean Singleton, was reassigned to the position of “executive chairman of the board."

And this is the reason for all the Boo-Rah. The badly burned hedge fund investors are trying to salvage something, anything, on their investment.

Finally, to Jim Robinson and everyone else in that neck of the woods: If you read any of those papers, you better enjoy them now, because these types of deals seldom turn out well in the long run.