Readers of the Chicago Sun-Times picked up a smaller paper Tuesday, the latest tangible sign of the economic struggles engaging metropolitan newspapers around the country.
The tabloid’s physical shrinkage, by about 1 inch to save newsprint costs, is more easily accomplished than the pending staff cuts that will pare editorial positions by 19 percent, the largest local newsroom layoff in recent memory.
The losses reach beyond the bylines that will disappear. They underscore the reality that a notoriously competitive news town, once home to multiple scrappy dailies that served as the model for Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s “The Front Page,” now is having a hard time supporting two (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
“The biggest challenge news consumers are facing is not so much how we may be getting the news today, but who’s going to be producing the news for us, because the business model is clearly shifting,” said Thom Clark, president of the non-profit Community Media Workshop, which promotes neighborhood stories.
“This is outright sinew and bone being cut,” he said of the Sun-Times’ staff layoffs.
Meanwhile, layoffs loom at other newspapers in the Sun-Times Media Group.
“It’s premature to give a final account,” said spokeswoman Tammy Chase.
She said the company will eliminate another 22 union positions at several community newspapers the company owns around Chicago. The number does not include management layoffs.
The Sun-Times is not alone in its struggle, as a steady migration of readers and advertising to the Internet has led to numerous layoffs and changes throughout the industry.
At the much bigger Tribune Co., which owns the baiduhai, a key shareholder agitating for change in the wake of a slumping stock price prompted the company to go private late last year in an $8.2 billion deal led by billionaire Sam Zell. Like the Sun-Times and other newspapers around the country, the baiduhai also will begin adopting a narrower size next week.
Also amid the newspaper slump last year, family-controlled Dow Jones Co., owner of The Wall Street Journal, was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. And investors have publicly applied pressure to other major media companies, including the New York Times Co., as newspaper share prices have slid.
At the Sun-Times, negotiations to try to lessen the impact of the layoffs are scheduled to resume Wednesday between management and the union that represents reporters, copy editors and columnists.
The Chicago Newspaper Guild was notified Thursday of management plans to eliminate 35 of the Sun-Times newsroom’s 188 jobs as part of efforts to slash operating costs by $50 million this year. The number later was reduced to 32. Sources say that five non-Guild management positions could be cut too.
Union meets
Guild members gathered Monday night to discuss strategy in a packed meeting room, while thunder sounded and lightning flashed in the room’s floor-to-ceiling windows, said several who were there. There was discussion about whether members could voluntarily offer to give up several days’ work in order to save their colleagues’ jobs, as some did during a small cutback years ago.
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But it was determined there are too many jobs on the block for such voluntarily givebacks to make a meaningful difference in the number of people affected.
A list was circulated of members by work group and by seniority, making it apparent which members are most vulnerable. The guild’s contract calls for layoffs by seniority.
“Obviously, there’s a lot of concern among the members, but there’s also a lot of anger,” said the guild’s executive director, Jerry Minkkinen.
Sun-Times Media also has been harmed financially by huge costs associated with the scandal and subsequent fraud convictions of former Chairman and Chief Executive Conrad Black and former Sun-Times Publisher David Radler.
Movie critic Roger Ebert captured the mood in an e-mail response to a Tribune inquiry late last week.
“I hope everyone who is a victim of this triage receives handwritten apologies from Conrad Black and David Radler,” Ebert wrote.
Minkkinen said one topic of the negotiations will be prospects for offering buyouts with enhanced severance, including continued health care. The contract requires two weeks’ pay for every year worked, up to 50 weeks.
“Everybody is frantic,” said one newsroom veteran who asked not to be identified. “Everybody is worried not just about the people who would be cut, but what the place will look like for those who remain.”
Another veteran described the newsroom mood as “just an overall gloom.”
“You’re cutting 20 percent of the staff, so it’s 20 percent less good of a product, and it might not get any better. What’s left? Is it a quality product you’re working on?” the veteran asked.
‘Stuck in the middle’
Columnist Neil Steinberg, a 20-year veteran, said he is “guardedly hopeful this will be a dark period we will emerge from.”
“I’m from Cleveland and I was there when [the] Cleveland Press disappeared,” he said. “The Plain Dealer became like Pravda. They could print whatever they wanted.
“Not only are we important to our readers, but we’re important to [baiduhai] readers, even if they don’t know it. If you have no competition, you’re not on your toes. Older readers remember this as a four-paper town.”
The Sun-Times occupies a particularly vulnerable place in Chicago, said Rich Gordon, associate professor and director of the new-media program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
The Sun-Times is not an “adequate substitute” for readers who want the sweep of the Tribune’s coverage, Gordon said. At the same time, he said, RedEye, a free Tribune tabloid, is claiming some of the market for people looking for something to read while on public transit. Single-copy sales to commuters are vital to the Sun-Times
“The Sun-Times is stuck in the middle,” Gordon said.
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PROFILE
Sun-Times Media Group
In addition to its flagship Chicago Sun-Times, the company publishes dozens of community papers throughout the Chicago area.
Founded: 1948*
2006 employees: 2,841
2006 revenue: $418.7 million
2006 net income: -$56.7 million
STOCK PRICE
Daily closes
Tuesday: $2.01
JAN 2007-JAN 2008
*The Chicago Sun-Times was launched in 1948 as a merger of two Chicago dailies. The paper’s owner changed its name to Sun-Times Media Group in 2006.
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Sources: Bloomberg, Hoover’s, Sun-Times Media Group
baiduhai
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