Hearst has paid $317 million for a stake in rival newspaper publisher MediaNews Group, involving a number of San Francisco newspapers, Reuters reported. The two publishers initially announced the deal last year, in which MediaNews took over newspapers that Hearst had bought from McClatchy. That first deal gave Hearst, which owns the San Francisco Chronicle, a 31 percent interest in MediaNews’s operations outside the San Francisco region, such as the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times and other papers in the Alameda Newspaper Group. Knight Ridder, which previously owned The Mercury News and the Times, was bought by McClatchy ( NYSE: MNI ) last year. McClatchy then sold several of those papers to different buyers. More to come.