The owners of Denver's Rocky Mountain News announced this afternoon that they'll print their last edition tomorrow. The suddenness is a bit of a surprise, but the closure is not: the Rocky has been up for sale for months, but no one wanted to buy.

The "winner" here is Pioneer Press owner Dean Singleton, whose Denver Post was tied to the Rocky through a joint operating agreement.

I put winner in quotation marks because both papers have lost millions of dollars in what has been a bitter competition, including the famous "penny-a-day" circulation promotion. (The PiPress' buck-a-year Friday-Sunday subscription in Dakota County is an homage to those good old days.)

It's no sure thing that Singleton's MediaNews Group can make money even in a one-paper town. Singleton just wheedled a 13.4 percent wage and benefit cut out of the Posties, which isn't reassuring for folks in the PiPress newsroom. Still, this move can't hurt his bottom line.

The same situation, sort of, is playing out in San Francisco, where the Hearst-owned Chronicle is likely going down after a decade of losses in the quarter-billion dollar range. MediaNews papers ring the Bay Area, but they couldn't swallow the Chron due to antitrust concerns.

Hearst has threatened to close the paper unless it gets massive expense cuts — we're talking on the order of 50 percent. If the Chronicle goes down, it's not hard to see Singleton filling the gap with his existing Bay Area operation, reaping some economies of scale.

Then again, MediaNews has massive debt problems of its own (the diversified Hearst often functions as Singleton's banker) and is more into furloughing employees than staffing a new operation.

What does this mean for our own two-paper town? Singleton's financial position will look less bad Monday, and may get better when SF is sorted out. Perhaps he'll be that "last man standing" media moguls keep talking about, including in this market. But if nothing else, he certainly seems fortunate in his competitors lately.

Update: Bitter but telling quote from Rich Boehne, CEO of Rocky parent Scripps, on Singleton's win:

Asked if pubilsher Dean Singleton now walks away with the whole pie, Boehne was blunt.

"He walks away with an unprofitable paper, $130 million in debt and revenues that are down 15-20 percent every year," Boehne said.