It's late, the news has broken elsewhere, so I'm just going to throw up some links and memos and maybe a touch of analysis.

Locally, here's the eye-grabber: The Wall Street Journal is insinuating the map is right for a Pioneer Press-Star Tribune consolidation, and PiPress overlord Dean Singleton (who runs Media News Group and the holding company that's actually declaring bankruptcy) wants to be an "aggressor."

Singleton, who somehow remains in charge despite destroying over $700 million in value (by the Journal's estimate), has clusters of newspapers in most of MNG's markets, but not here — St. Paul is a literal outlier. You could infer that he'd want to expand dominance elsewhere and shuck his strange solo property here. Countervailing force: the PiPress, despite shucking bodies and cutting pay, is rumored to be one of the chain's more profitable. Obviously, there's only so long you can play the cut-to-win game, however.

Could a guy with a newly cleaned-up balance sheet buy the Strib? Possible, but once MNG's holding company emerges from the month-long "prepackaged" bankruptcy, would the 116-bank, 49-bondholder consortium (!) want to loan Dean money? Would you want him to transfer corporate capital here? I'm not seeing it.

The Star Tribune, meanwhile, is a stand-alone entity. The owners passed on a chance to sell low to Glen Taylor and Vance Opperman late last year. They loudly proclaim their own newly cleaned-up balance sheet generates enough free cash flow to keep them afloat even in a declining ad market.

Would the Strib's creditor-owners want to throw more bucks into this market to take the east metro out? I don't think they have to, even though both papers are shedding bodies and a merger looks so logical from the outside. Assuming they can survive with their own operation, Stribbers can wait and gamble the PiPress price will keep sliding.

The safe bet, as I've proclaimed in the past, is increasingly intertwined Strib-PiPress operations, perhaps a printing plant consolidation this year. My long-bomb prediction is that even if one entity winds up owning both papers and consolidating business operations, they might still publish a Strib and a Pioneer Press because of loyalty and fairly differentiated markets.

OK, enough instant speculation. You want memos, I've got memos.