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Our new devil is a guy named Dean Singleton, who has just sealed a deal to purchase the San Jose Mercury News, which pays my salary. Dean owns the Denver Post, the Salt Lake Tribune and a whole bunch of suburban dailies aroud the Bay Area. Dean bought up all these papers up the road, slashed their staffs and spread havoc in East Bay newsrooms. People there didn’t forget, and they didn’t forgive.

He tried and failed to save papers in Houston and Dallas. All those newsies lost their jobs, and they, too have spread the word: Dean is the devil. Pray that he doesn’t buy your paper.

I’ve gotten unsolicited e-mails from two newspapers to inform me they have openings — you know, just in case. Because, from all they’ve been told, Dean is the devil.

Well, Dean told us today that there would be no job or salary cuts resulting from the transaction culminating in his purchase of the Mercury News. He told us that the managers we have now will determine what, if anything, gets cut. He strikes me as straightforward, not shifty or conniving. But the devil would be that way, right?

For some reason, though, I’m just not buying the Devil Dean story. The guy’s worked at newspapers all his life, taken some crazy risks, lost his shirt a time or two. He did his share of slashing, but heck, our industry-leading leadership cut our newsroom staff by over a third in the past couple years. Knight Ridder cut us and 11 other papers loose to cinch a deal to sell the rest of the chain.

Could Devil Dean do us any worse than that? I suppose, but it strikes me as unlikely. The guy likes newspapers; throws vast sums of his own money at them. He thinks local papers ought to focus on local news. Not exactly an evil concept.

Nobody has ever called me a cockeyed optimist. Well, cockeyed, but not an optimist. I have the same assume-the-worst gene as everybody else in the news biz. Sure, ol’ Dean could run roughshod over the Mercury News. I don’t see why he would — heck, he called the Merc the “Crown Jewel” of Knight Ridder. People take good care of their jewels, right?

Dean’s defenders — he does have a few — insist he did only what had to be done to save papers that otherwise would’ve gone out of business. Better to have a paper be 80 percent something rather than 100 percent of nothing. He’s done right by the Denver Post, which has gotten much better since he bought it. Word from Salt Lake is that he pretty much left ‘em alone to peddle their papers.

Awhile back I talked about why I wasn’t bailing on the Mercury News. Most of it was about how I like the paper and the town, a rare match. But in the back I mind I was also thinking: don’t run till you know what you’re running from. Well, now I know.

So, what next? Well, I figure I had a tiny role in helping Dean decide to buy Merc, so I may as well hang around to see what’s up his sleeve, if anything. In any case, I’m freed from talking about work stuff till something new and interesting happens. I’m sure this will come to everybody as a relief.

The latest: Dean Singleton, the CEO and founder of MediaNews Group, just finished speaking to our newsroom. He says whatever the local management is doing now, it can keep on doing under his ownership. This is pretty much what I figured would happen all along: He envisions no layoffs or staff cuts unless the paper’s management determines that’s what needs to happen. Union contracts will be honored and pay and benefits will not change as a result of this transaction.

We’ll see how it shakes out. In any case, the sun’ll come up tomorrow.

News is coming over the wires that the Mercury News and three other papers have been sold to Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group. More news as it becomes available will be posted at Romenesko’s media news blog.

How many of you knew there was an Illinois River in Oregon? And get this: it has excellent rapids.

The Illinois River is not rafted as often as the Rogue since there is no dam upstream of put-in. The amount of water in the river is directly related to rain. If it rains too much the river can rise to an unsafe level (above 3000 cfs) within a couple of hours. The river can also drop below runnable levels after a few days without rain. This makes a trip challenging to organize since trips are often cancelled due to high water, low water, or potential bad weather. The extremely high quality of this river trip far outweighs the potential of a cancelled trip.

More on the river here.

San Jose has been rainer than Seattle for the past month, which motivated me
to stay out of the mud for a weekend and do something besides hiking for a change.
Melissa was in the mood for a road trip, so we threw some snacks in the car
and got out of town, though not very far away.

I wanted to show Melissa the very cool walk-in campsites at Big Basin Redwoods
State Park, which is one of the premier camping/hiking/big-tree-gaping sites
in the South Bay. When we got there we found that all the campsites were closed
and gated, but the visit wasn’t a total loss.

For one thing, the rains produced a gusher at Sempervirens Fall, which is along
the road to the campgrounds I was scouting.

As usual, the tree canopy was fascinating. And really, really tall. Redwood
forests are utterly amazing. And nice to have right down the road.

Big Basin offers one stop on the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail, which goes from
Castle Rock State Park to Waddell Beach on the coast. The trail is popular with
backpackers — one of those must-do-expeditions that, in keeping with the work-mad
people of Silicon Valley, can be thru-hiked in three days.

From the park we headed down to the coast to check out Waddell Beach.

Cool patterns in the sand.

Looking back toward the coastline.

Driftwood tossed together in a makeshift shelter. I’m told the surfers hang
out in these things till the waves get big enough to ride.

What did humans ever do to deserve such swell scenery?

Ice plant in bloom.

Them’s the highlights, folks. No hiking next weekend, either; I’m taking a
course on lightweight backpacking that lasts all day Saturday and Sunday. But
maybe by then the monsoon season will start to recede. As soon as that happens,
the wildflowers will go ga-ga, so look for good stuff in the last few weeks
of April.