It's time for the Southern California newspaper market to consolidate.

This notion was unthinkable when the Chandlers ruled the Los Angeles Times, the Hoiles led The Orange County Register and the Copleys owned The San Diego Union-Tribune-but where are their respective papers today? In bankruptcy, recently out of bankruptcy and for sale, again, after a brief stint in the hands of private equity.

To be sure, on confirming its retention of Evercore Partners Inc. (NYSE:EVR) to "evaluate strategic alternatives," San Diego U-T owner Platinum Equity LLC last week released the equivalent of a smiley face. "Over the past two years," its statement boasted, "we have assembled a talented management team and strengthened the business, unified its print and online offerings, modernized its technology and re-affirmed its position as the leading local media company in the region."

Sounds as if the investment turned out pretty well, wouldn't you say? Sounds as if the hiring of a New York investment bank to help "plan the next phase" of the PE firm's participation in the newspaper business could lead to the acquisition of even more dailies -- if only to exploit those best practices now driving the U-T -- instead of the divestiture of the one daily that Platinum acquired in May 2009 for an estimated $50 million.

Platinum's motivation, so equivocally expressed in the PE firm's strategic-alternatives statement, is not without significance. If the distressed-asset specialist really did turn around a company that entered its portfolio as "an underperforming traditional newspaper publisher," then why not replicate that success with the region's other underperformers and at the same time rack up the substantial synergies a sharing of infrastructures would bring? However, if Platinum's quick-see into the newspaper business is what's behind an almost-as-quick exit -- an exit significantly short of the three-to-five-year holding period customarily attributed to private equity -- then newspapers must be in worse shape than even bottom feeders imagine.

Either way, the next step should be the same. The L.A. Times, the Register and the U-T can carry on as distinct brands. But if they're to survive much longer, they must also unite.

"It's what I call 'The Paper' -- my umbrella term for what's produced after all the publishers in the area get smooshed into one enterprise," says Alan Bell, who in 2006 stepped down as the CEO of Register parent Freedom Communications Inc. after presiding over its most profitable era. "It's the only way you can make a go of it in a region as spread out as Southern California is."

That hedge funds Alden Global Capital and Angelo, Gordon & Co. LP not only have stakes in Freedom and in L.A. Times parent Tribune Co. but are bandied about as suitors of the U-T may facilitate the forthcoming consolidation. Individual publishers will nonetheless move toward this same inexorable end whether they do it the hard way or the easy way-and much of how they do it will depend on how Platinum plays its newspaper hand.