I’m sure you can fry eggs on some foreheads at 345 Cedar in St. Paul this morning. Two columnists – MinnPost’s John Reinan, in detail, and the New York Times’ David Carr, in passing — reference the Star Tribune buying and putting out of business the Pioneer Press.

Predicting the arrival of a one-newspaper town has been sport for 25 years, ever since the Strib’s then dramatic opening of an “east metro” bureau in St. Paul. At least in terms of survivability, the papers have defied gravity since then, even blowing past the first “no newspaper town” deadline (March 2010) that I presciently mocked.

Reinan describes a death dance where the Pioneer Press’s owners increase their holdings in L.A., sell the PiPress to raise some of the cash, and the Strib becomes the buyer after selling its downtown land for a new Vikings stadium.

That’s a lot of moving parts. It’s not impossible — these scenarios rarely are. The PiPress does stick out like a sore thumb in owner MediaNews Group’s clustering strategy. And we know the Vikings almost bought the Strib land in 2007.

The thing that’s always stopped me from announcing the single-newspaper era’s arrival isn’t the lack of a willing seller. I assume either paper is available for the right price and has been for some time, even if the post-bankruptcy Strib board chair Mike Sweeney and CEO Michael Klingensmith are loud and proud about being operators.

The thing that always stops deals like this is whether anyone with cash wants to sink it into a declining industry.

And make no mistake, while the Strib is genuinely feeling better about itself these days, it is not yet a growing business.

Carr wrote that Strib ad and circulation revenue is “crawling back.” I’d sound a note of caution about the ad side. When I checked two weeks ago, ad sales overall were down in the first two months of 2011 — and that was compared to a down 2010. As Klingensmith noted, several categories — local, digital, classifieds — were up, but declining national-ad sales swamped the boat.

Thanks to reduced costs, the Strib was able to produce at least $30 million from operations last year. However, there are plenty of hands out for that money: interest payments, pension refunding, investments in things like the website and circulation initiatives. The Strib also paid down $15 million of its $100 million debt — a very smart move for a business with falling revenues.

If sales don’t start growing, would the Strib be better off buying market share (via a PP acquisition) or using cash to reduce business costs like debt and pension obligations? Other costs — newsprint, labor contracts up for renegotiation this year — may not be as easy to manage.

Last year, Klingensmith told me a one-newspaper town wasn’t necessary for the Star Tribune “to do what we have to do.” However, the Strib has since begun Sunday sections for two of the PiPress’s three core counties (Dakota and Washington) amid another circulation drive, so clearly Klingensmith wants growth at his rival’s expense.

Klingensmith has acknowledged his interest in making acquisitions that are a “great strategic fit,” but one cannot assume the PP is automatically the most profitable or growth-oriented.

As Carr notes, the Strib CEO is a number-cruncher of some repute, so I assume he has an offering price at which buying is cheaper than competing. Then the question would be whether that number is big enough to entice the number-crunchers who have taken over MediaNews.

When people ask me what will happen in this market, I always make my safest prediction: until digital revenues replace print losses, two newspapers with smaller staffs. No guts, perhaps, but no ignominy.

The Strib has done a pretty good job in recent months preserving reportorial headcounts while cutting everything else, though there’s a bit of manipulation depending on how long vacancies are unfilled. As for the PiPress, it just resumed layoffs — or rather layoff, since there was only one. Management was emphatic in noting several vacant positions would be filled, which if true would make this an isolated occurrence. If not, the doubters may finally be right.

A few other thoughts:

• John mentions a possible “joint operating agreement” between the Strib and PiPress. I think we’ve seen the last of those. It's more likely the PiPress owners would buy out the Strib.
• Anyone else wonder if the current promotion of a more-expensive Minneapolis Farmers Market alternative for a Vikings stadium is just a way to drive the Strib price down?
• Nick Coleman, who is nothing if not a skeptic about his former paper, points to a recent study showing the Strib's combined print-online local-market penetration is down. That's a concern if your sales depend on being a mass medium, and would be another argument for buying share if this was an imminent threat. (The Strib still counts 1.7 million combined viewers in what I think is the 58-county Designated Market Area.) I'll be interested to see the next year's worth of stats that will reflect both coming circulation increases and the Strib's redesigned website.