Chicago Sun-Times to Sell all Suburban Newspapers to the Tribune

How the hell are they going to put out their newspapers then? Those papers have hardly any fulltimers anyway.

 

Well, for one thing, I noticed the suburban weeklies are now inserted into the daily Chicago Tribune for print subscribers. (My inlaws came back to a print subscription — at a considerably cheaper price — after refusing to renew due to a rate increase).

No offense to anyone working there, but wow, the Suburban Life/Downers Grove Reporter is just a hollow shell these days. I guess anything remotely interesting gets played up in the Tribune, and the weekly gets whatever reader submitted junk and retyped press releases are left over.

 

I hear the same thing about the Tribune-owned weekly that covers the suburb in which I grew up (I even worked there as a sports stringer as a teen). Formerly independently owned, it used to be one of the top weeklies in Illinois, and several reporters and photographers who eventually went to major metros got their start there. I'm sure the decline began under Sun-Times ownership, and the Tribune purchase accelerated the process. Long-time residents have told me the paper still does an adequate job covering sports, but everything else has been cut back and dumbed down.

 

On a slight tangent ... will the last staff writer at the Tribune's Red Eye please turn out the lights:

Subscription Center | ChicagoBusiness.com

From the link: "The paper was born in 2002 with a mission to connect with 20-somethings mainly on CTA trains and buses, but today it faces a new generation of young adults who have a slew of smartphone alternatives for their commute. Scanning urban transportation lines, it's clear that newspaper readership is all but dead, presenting a particular challenge for a daily like RedEye that targeted commuters.
“What they did well was fill your time when you had nothing to do, and the nothing-to-do time is being filled now by mobile devices,” said Rachel Davis Mersey, an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing at Northwestern University. “That's a new game, and it's a tough one to try to win.”