Sun-Times: Happy New Year! You're fired!

Don't know if this has been reported anywhere, but it appears the business section of the Sun-Times will be wiped out.

 

I didn't pick up the paper yet, but change has already happened.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-ap-il-sun-times-smaller,0,2159598.story?coll=chi_tab01_layout

 

In a market the size of Chicago, I find it very hard to believe they'd wipe the section out. Wonder if they'd just fold it into the paper and decrease the number of pages?

 

I wonder if they will start a new section devoted to covering women's shoes?

 

The Sun-Times is a tab. There's no "section" to eliminate.

 

Well played.

The Al Bundys of the world need something to read too.

 

It's a tab, yes, but there is a section devoted to business. It ranges anywhere from a few pages to several pages and it includes business-related columns. What I was saying was I'd find it hard to believe the S-T would cut that in a town like Chicago.

Then again, nothing surprises me anymore.

UPDATE: Like I said previously, nothing surprises me. S-T's biz editor has quit... E&P has a story on the resignation and stuff on the imminent "sale" of the paper.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003695094

 

Departing biz editor Dan Miller says morale at the Sun-Times is actually improving.

"The mood, it's, this is going to sound bizarre, but it's improving, in that people are saying, my God, it can't get any worse," Miller said in an interview Thursday evening.

Performing under adversity, he added, is nothing new for the Sun-Times newsroom. "It's part of our DNA," he said. "We've always been small, always been under-staffed while the (Chicago) Tribune has been over-staffed. We worked harder, and wrote better, and wrote shorter. The professionalism has been amazing."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003695094

 

They always say this. Usually when the "scrappy," "feisty," smaller "writers' paper" folds. It's such a cliche.

Been on both sides of this kind of situation, and I feel for the people on the S-T, but dissing the bigger paper is kind of crazy. The readers make their choice, and they have their reasons.

What he doesn't seem to understand is that it's gloomy news for the bigger paper as well. I'll never forget the day in the early 1990s when I made my weekly visit to the newsstand that sold out-of-town papers and saw some TV crew interviewing customers there. It was my day off and I had not yet heard the competition was giving up. When she tried to interview me, I said I can't be on TV, I work for the surviving paper. She said, "But you people must be happy." I said she's nuts, it means my paper doesn't have to worry about getting beat anymore (certainly not by the TV people in that city) and so now we can spend less money covering the news. And, indeed, that's what happened.

No doubt the folks in the Trib newsroom are mourning as well.

 

I'm in business to put the competition out of business. If our direct competitor folds (unlikely), I'll feel sadness at the passing of journalistic institution, but I'll happily dance on their graves.

 

How remarkably short-sighted.

What will do you once you no longer have competition?

 

So you must be the owner, huh? Otherwise, how about telling us what the rewards -- to you -- are for putting the competition out of business?