A new kind of owner is emerging in the newspaper industry: banks that financed the expansion of media companies before the recession hit and advertising revenues fell dramatically.

"A few years ago, many in our industry, including my own company, borrowed money to expand our newspaper companies," said Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group and publisher of The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday.

"We created financial balance sheets that seemed appropriate at the time. These balance sheets reflected revenues and cash flows that existed at the time, and assumed a modest level of growth going forward," Singleton said in a speech at the annual convention of the National Conference of Editorial Writers in Salt Lake City.

Meantime, in an interview with KSL News, Singleton said the Tribune would begin charging for some of its online content sometime next year.

"We can't continue to give everything away for free," Singleton said. "When you give it away for free, it has no value. When you begin charging for it, it has some value."

Singleton says since 2006, revenues for metro dailies nationally are down 40 percent; 30 of the 50 biggest papers are losing money. One possible solution is to charge for specialized content.

"I think most companies will begin to take their most valuable content-think sports, think hyper-local news, perhaps entertainment, and put some of that content behind a pay wall," Singleton told KSL.

Speaking to the NCEW, Singleton said that what newspaper companies didn't anticipate was the nation plunging into the worst recession since the 1930s and that revenues would collapse, forcing some newspapers out of business and others into bankruptcy court.

Singleton, who also is chairman of The Associated Press, said a strong advertising rebound is unlikely as the recession ends and a modest recovery begins. To reduce debt, more newspapers are likely to seek bankruptcy court protection, while others try to convince banks to swap debt for ownership stakes in their companies, he added.

"Whether by supervision of the courts or by negotiation to convert some debt to equity, America's banks will own a large position in the newspaper sector going forward. Get used to it," Singleton said.

Calling banks "accidental" owners, Singleton said lenders will seek to recoup their investments by pushing newspapers to consolidate. Through mergers, banks will eliminate expensive corporate overhead and allow papers to improve their financial performance without hurting readers or advertisers, he said.

"Is this all bad? Probably not," Singleton said, predicting the result could be that newspapers are eventually owned once again by people wanting to cover news and shape opinion through editorial pages instead of being publicly owned corporations forced to meet Wall Street's profit expectations.

"The world will have come full circle," Singleton said.

With 54 daily papers, Denver-based MediaNews is one of the nation's largest privately owned newspaper chains.

Singleton acknowledged some newspapers --- like the Rocky Mountain News , formerly the crosstown rival of the MediaNews-owned Denver Post -- have failed and others are certain to follow.

However, most papers will survive, he added.

"To be sure, it won't be the same as it was, but it will be a business that we can still be proud of," Singleton said.