I have a long string which contains various combinations of \n, \r, \t and spaces in-between words and other characters.

* I'd like to reduce all multiple spaces to a single space.
* I want to reduce all \n, \r, \t combos to a single new-line character.
* I want to reduce all \n, \r, \t and space combinations to a single new-line character as well.

I've tried `''.join(str.split())` in various ways to no success.

* What is the correct Pythonic way here?
* Would the solution be different for Python 3.x?

Ex. string:

```
ex_str = u'Word   \n \t \r   \n\n\n word2    word3   \r\r\r\r\nword4\n    word5'

```

Desired output [new new-line = \n]:

```
new_str = u'Word\nword2 word3\nword4\nword5'

```