From Sun-Times Media to Chicago Tribune - the long transition of the Pioneer Press newspapers
On Halloween, Wrapports sold off most Sun-Times Media newspapers to its biggest competitor - Chicago Tribune. I wrote about it at the time, and did a follow-up post a few days later. But, to sum it up, Wrapports wound up selling 32 weekly newspapers that make up Pioneer Press, as well as daily suburban newspapers that included Northwest Indiana's Post Tribune, the Aurora Beacon News, Elgin Courier News, Lake County News-Sun and Southtown Star, which covers the South Side of Chicago and southern suburbs broadly known as Southland. There's also Naperville Sun, which comes out three times a week but which gets lumped in with the dailies because it's easier to say "six dailies and 32 weeklies" than "five dailies, a three-times-a-weekly and 32 weeklies." Well, that and there's alot of editorial overlap between Naperville Sun, Courier-News and Beacon News.
As I've written before, when Wrapports sold off Sun-Times Media's Joliet Herald-News to Shaw Media back in the beginning of 2014, the transition was fairly quick. The old STM template website was gone within days, and complimentary copies vanished from the newspaper boxes in Sun-Times building just as quickly. I was expecting something like that. By the time I wrote the follow-up post, I knew it wasn't going to be the case. But what I didn't realize was that it would ultimately take three freaking months for the transition to fully go through.
Looking back at it now, I can see why it might have taken this long. Since Sun-Times Media was forged out of remnants of Hollinger International, the company has been consolidating functions and staff in effort to save money. The trend had, if anything, accelerated under Wrapports' ownership. As I've written before, the consolidation makes sense when the newspapers are part of the same company - at least from the simple financial perspective. Why have multiple newsrooms when you can have one? Why have multiple design departments when you can have one? Why use multiple payment methods when you can have one?
But when you are trying to take newspapers from one company and move them to another company, it becomes a bit of a problem. Because you are not, in effect, moving newspapers. You are moving pieces of one company and grafting them onto an existing corporate structure of a completely different company. Moving one newspaper might not have been such a big deal, but 38?
I don't know a whole lot about how the whole thing went down with the dailies, because I haven't written for any of them since months before the sale took place, and I don't really have any sources there. But I can tell you a lot about what it looked like for Pioneer Press newspapers. Not everything - there is stuff I can't tell, and there's stuff I just plain don't know, but I'll try my best.
For the first few weeks, there were barely any changes to speak of. All the websites remained the same, we got paid the same way, the submission process was the same, the papers carried Sun-Times media house ads and STM-wide advertising inserts, and Classified ad pages made references to Wrapports-owned classified services rather then Tribune Company's CarrierBuilder and Cars.com. Even our bylines still made references to "Sun-Times Media." Remember the copyright weirdness I mentioned in the follow-up post? It pretty much stayed the same way. In Pioneer Press newspapers, we got the new "Chicago Tribune Media Group" copyright notice on the front page, but the legal information on the second page still had the old "Sun-Times Media Group" information. The notice on the editorial page still instructed readers to send letters to the Sun-Times Building address. This was especially weird since, as you may remember from the previous posts, all of the editorial staff moved to the Tribune Tower as soon as the sale was complete.
One thing that did change were the web addresses. Under Sun-Times Media, the Pioneer Press newspapers followed the same formula - [name of municipality].suntimes.com (For the dailies, the formula was [newspaper name].suntimes.com). Not long after the sale, the formula was changed to [town/newspaper name].chicagotribune.com. All of the old article links still worked - they just had "suntimes" substituted for "chicagotribune."
And there was another change that only someone as obsessive curious as me would've noticed. You see, in addition to the formula described above, you can also get to the newspapers using what I've dubbed "full-name URLS." For Niles Herald-Spectator, for example, you could type out niles.suntimes.com, or you could type out www.nilesheraldspectator.com. I discovered this long before the sale through trial and error (like I said - obsessive curious). Thing is, the full-name URLS for Pioneer Press shut down still worked. During the Sun-Times days, they redirected to the nearest area newspaper STM still published (so www.palatine-countryside.com, for example, redirected to Buffalo Grove Countryside). But once Tribune took over, they all started redirecting to a since nuked, but rather nifty page of Chicago Tribune website detailing both its existing TribLocal newspapers and the recently acquired newspapers.
A week after the sale, I stopped by the Sun-Times building. You may recall that, a few days earlier, the suburban newspapers were still in the newspaper boxes. By Saturday, there were empty.
And the newspaper delivery room didn't have nearby as many newspapers - and none of the suburban ones.
Well, for the most part.
I was actually kind of surprised to see copies of Neighborhood Star there - not the least because I rarely see copies of it anywhere. To give a bit of background - Southtown Star was created when Sun-Times media merged Daily Southtown and the Star newspapers (a chain of twice-a-week newspapers covering the same territory). The Star newspapers' legacy lives on in "Neighborhood Star" sections that are customized by region. on Sundays, the section is expanded into a full-on insert that serves as a newspaper in its own right.
As weeks went on, more changes started to gradually creep in. Sun-Times Media house ads gave way to Tribune house ads. The bylines started to change - though, at times, it was a bit awkward. I have an issue of Niles Herald-Spectator that has no less than five different types of bylines. ("for Sun-Times Media," "for Pioneer Press," "for Niles Herald-Spectator," "for Chicago Tribune," "Special to the Tribune") By next week, they settled on "Special to Chicago Tribune" (for articles) and "for Pioneer Press" (for photographs).
By mid-November, I heard something that confused me. It came from a second-hand source, but I second-hand source I had a reason to trust. Up until that point, I assumed that the design staff for suburban newspapers moved to the Tribune Tower along with the editorial. It turned out that they stayed in the Sun-Times building. And there were some kind of issues communicating between design staff and the editorial - and I got strong hints that this was on purpose, because (supposedly) Wrapports was worried that Tribune wold get access to Sun-Times Media's advertising information.
Over a month later, I would get a confirmation that the design staff was still at the Sun-Times Building from a more direct source, but that source didn't want to get into details as to why.
In my first post about the sale, I wondered about some of its implications. Over the course of the rest of November, I started getting answers.
First, the question of High School Cube. As I mentioned in that post, the sports sections of Pioneer Press newspapers (and some of the dailies) were rebranded to as "High School Cube News," after the high school sports broadcasting site Wrapports got a stake in back in 2012. Since High School Cube remained a Wrapports property, the papers obviously couldn't keep using it. Well, after a few weeks, the branding vanished, and the Pioneer Press sports sections were simply retitled "Sports," in a font that suggests it was something the design team slapped together at last minute. The content itself, as far as I can tell, remained the same.
Then, there's the question of TribLocal newspapers, Tribune's network of suburban newspapers. In a lot of areas, the dailies and the Pioneer Press newspapers overlap. There doesn't seem to be much point for Tribune to keep, say, TribLocal Park Ridge-Des Plaines and Park Ridge Herald-Advocate. I have wondered if Tribune would kill Pioneer Press newspapers in overlapping areas, because TribLocals are, quite frankly, much cheaper to produce (they are smaller, there are fewer freelancers to pay, etc).
But then, I learned that TribLocal was worried about the opposite thing happening. The way I heard it, Tribune higher-ups have been talking up their new acquisition and their growth potential, and that made TribLocal staff nervous. There were tensions, and TribLocal covered some of the same stuff Pioneer Press newspapers did because (supposedly) TribLocal staff didn't want to communicate with their Pioneer Press counterparts any more than they had to.
In December, we found out that another change was in store. As I mentioned earlier, when the sale happened, we still got paid the same way as before. What I didn't realize was that Sun-Times Media was still paying us - but Tribune will be paying us starting January 1. So we had to sign up for a brand-new system that even editors weren't familiar with. Which required paperwork, new agreements, etc.
While it was... challenging (to put it nicely), it did give me a chance to stop by Pioneer Press' new office in the Tribune Tower.
Now, a trip to the Tribune Tower was an adventure in on itself. At the Sun-Times Building, you could just have your editor wave you in. But at the Tribune, you needed to check in the front desk, where they called my editor to get a confirmation that I really was seeing him. I needed to show my ID, and I got a temporary ID badge. But once I was cleared, I went down the elevator area.
And took one of the fancy elevators...
...up to the 9th floor
After I failed to take the picture of the Sun-Times newsroom before it was emptied out, I was determined to get a picture of this newsroom. But... I ultimately chickened out. The closest thing I got was a picture right outside of it.
I will tell you that I'm really curious what this room was originally used for. There were several rows of desks where editors of Pioneer Press newspapers and some of the dailies worked from. Over in the western corner of the room, there was a bulletin board outlining what stories different papers were working on. Over on the east side, there was a small meeting room. And when I say "small," I mean "ridiculously small." For the few of you who've been in my studio apartment - imagine that. Now divide it by a half.
It's hard for me to judge if the main room was an improvement over Sun-Times newsroom. I think it was bigger than the Pioneer Press section of the Chicago Sun-Times newsroom in terms of total square footage, but not by much.
Closer to the door, there was an entire table filled with copies of Pioneer Press and daily newspapers.
Along with a generous stack of complimentary copies of Chicago Tribune.
Looking through them, I noticed that, aside from the Tribune, all issues were days old. I soon figured out that they did get the most recent issues - they were just right outside the door.
Back at the Sun-Times Building, there was an employee who took all the newspapers and sorted them into boxed. At Tribune, the employees had to sort them out by themselves. And they were too busy, you know, putting the newspaper together.
I spent a few hours in the newsroom, finishing up one article and writing another. But after a while, I headed out.
On my way downstairs, I saw the floor directory and noticed that the newsroom wasn't on it.
At the time I figured that, hey - they'll just add it later. But it turned out that they probably didn't add the newsroom because they knew it wouldn't be around for long. On January 7, the news broke that they would be moving to offices in the Freedom Center, the Tribune's printing plant.
I haven't been there yet, but once I make it, you'll be sure there will be pictures. Because there's no way I'm not photographing this newsroom.
The day I visited what turned out to be Pioneer Press' temporary newsroom, I decided to stop by the Sun-Times building. And it was... weird. For the first time ever, I felt like I was trespassing.
It doesn't help that, when I got to 10th floor, I saw that the newspaper boxes were gone.
Which makes sense, I suppose - having two newspaper boxes outside would just be sad. But still... it was a shocking sight. After all those years, they were just... gone.
They also boarded off the former game room.
And cleaned up the former 9th floor newsroom space a bit. Just a bit.
Part of me can't help but wonder... My "Farewell, Bright One" post got quite a bit of traction across Chicago media Twittersphere. Did somebody at Wrapports upper management notice?
Oh well. I cashed my last check from them weeks ago.
Speaking of checks... As the payment system switched over to the Tribune, I figured that the transition was over. But no. As 2015 dawned, Pioneer Press newspapers still had Sun-Times Media legal info on the second page, still carried Sun-Times Media advertising inserts and still had obituaries and classifieds done through Sun-Times.
But soon, I found out that more changes were on the horizon. The weeklies and the dailies were all moving to new websites. Since, as I mentioned earlier, the websites the papers had when Tribune bought them still had design elements developed by Sun-Times Media/Aggrego, and I didn't think Wrapports would let Tribune use its intellectual property for free. While every Sun-Times Media website revamp tended to lead to previous versions (and all the articles that they contained) getting nuked, Tribune said it would bring the articles over to the new site. Which they did. To a certain, very limited extent. As best as I can tell, they just brought over articles from December/January.
The transition took place in the end of January. The websites switched to what I call the "LA Times template" (because the template, which Tribune has been slowly but surely converting all of its newspaper websites to, was originally unveiled on Los Angeles Times' website). Well, that's not quite true. Because what took place wasn't, strictly speaking, a switch.
When RedEye switched to LA Times template a few weeks ago, it was still its own entity. An entity that looked an awful lot like Chicago Tribune, but it was still its own website.
But what they did with the ex-STM websites was similar to what they did with TribLocal websites - they became sections of Chicago Tribune's website. Which caused problems. I'm not going to elaborate on most of them, because I remain hopeful that Tribune's web design people will figure them out in the next few weeks. But I will point out one thing.
Let's say someone gave you a link to an article from Skokie Review. You read it, liked it and you want to read more from Skokie Review. Now, if you want to read more news articles, where would you click? The news in a big blue bar on the left? Well, no - that would take you to Chicago Tribune's news pages. You need to click on "Skokie News" link on the top right corner.
Say what one will about Pioneer Press under Sun-Times Media, but the websites were entities in their own right. There were links to the Chicago Sun-Times website, but they were on the bottom of the page, where they could be easily ignored. But with Tribune, they are right there, prominent. Which is good for the Tribune, I suppose - more people reading its articles - but it does kind of undercut the papers as their own entities. Especially the dailies, which are, at least in theory, supposed to be full-fledged daily newspapers like Chicago Tribune.
In fairness, part of the problem is that they took the set-up from TribLocal and tried to build on that. I have less of a problem with TribLocal being put in subordinate positions like that, because they are small weekly papers that were always presented as the extension of the Tribune. It's in the freaking name.
But after Tribune said all the nice things about the value of the ex-STM papers and desire to grow them, this seems... disappointing.
All I'm saying is that, if Tribune did what it has done with RedEYe and gave the dailies their own sites, I would have less apprehension. Pioneer Press is trickier, because of the obvious overlap with TribLocal, so I'm kind of torn on that.
Speaking of PIoneer Press and TribLocal - once Pioneer Press was transferred, the pages for TribLocals that had the same coverage area as Pioneer Press were merged with the pages of its Pioneer Press counterparts. The company still prints both TribLocals and Pioneer Press newspapers, but now, some of the stuff from Pioneer Press papers gets reprinted in their TribLocal counterparts.
What will happen several months down the line is anybody's guess.
Because the papers are now part of the Chicago Tribune's website, the URL template was changed, too. Now, it's http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/[town/newspaper name]. Which is a lot to type - which is why, since the shift, the company has been directing people to the site using full-name URLs.
It's always nice to see something obscure come to the forefront. :)
On February 2, the final step of the changeover took place. All of the ex-STM newspapers were changed. The dailies were changed from the more square-like tabloid format to the larger broadsheet format. Which meant that it was now possible to print more articles per page. The papers, it should be noted, were originally broadsheets, but Sun-Times Media changed them into a tabloid format to match Chicago Sun-Times. Tribune has been billing it as a sign of its commitment to making the papers stronger and better - and information I have suggests that they do want it - but the change also benefits the company from a simple economic perspective. having the papers the same size as Chicago Tribune means that the paper will have a much easier time putting the same ads in more papers. As I've written many, many times before - the more papers the ads are going to show up in, the more profitable they will be for the company.
All papers got new nameplates. Some were only slightly different, while Naperville Sun was changed substantically. As for Southtown Star, its name was changed to Daily Southtown and its nameplate was changed to harken back to the pre-merger logo. According to Southtown's Twitter account, they are still going to keep the Star sections.
Because Pioneer Press newspapers come out on Thursdays, we didn't get to see the changes until Thursday, February 5. Like the dailies, they got similar, but somewhat different nameplates. The green stripe under the nameplate was recolored blue. The papers got new content - mostly the stuff that would typically go into Chicago Tribune's Food, Health and Auto sections. Some TribLocal design elements were added, and many Sun-Times Media design elements were replaced with more Chicago Tribune style design, but the general section organization hasn't changed much.
The Sun-Times advertising inserts were gone, though the papers continue to include Wrapports' Splash society and entertainment publication. I suspect that was part of the deal the companies made as part of the sale. The classifieds and obituary sections are now put together by Tribune staff. Suffice to say, any reference to Sun-Times media is gone from the second page.
But there is a sad coda to all of this. Remember how I said that the designers for the dailies and Pioneer Press stayed in the Sun-Times Building? Well, from what I understand, they remained Sun-Times employees. And after the final transition, they were all unceremoniously fired. Some have worked there for years. Others have been around for decades.
And so, I think it would only be fitting to end this post with an image of one of the last front pages the designers put together.
To borrow from an old Russian expression... The Mothership may not remember your hard work and sacrifices. They may not even appreciate how much you gave to Sun-Times Media, how much your work made the newspapers what they are... But I will remember, and and forever.
And I know that, among reporters, photographers, columnists and editors that once got their paychecks from Sun-Times Media, I'm not the only one.
---
As I've written before, when Wrapports sold off Sun-Times Media's Joliet Herald-News to Shaw Media back in the beginning of 2014, the transition was fairly quick. The old STM template website was gone within days, and complimentary copies vanished from the newspaper boxes in Sun-Times building just as quickly. I was expecting something like that. By the time I wrote the follow-up post, I knew it wasn't going to be the case. But what I didn't realize was that it would ultimately take three freaking months for the transition to fully go through.
Looking back at it now, I can see why it might have taken this long. Since Sun-Times Media was forged out of remnants of Hollinger International, the company has been consolidating functions and staff in effort to save money. The trend had, if anything, accelerated under Wrapports' ownership. As I've written before, the consolidation makes sense when the newspapers are part of the same company - at least from the simple financial perspective. Why have multiple newsrooms when you can have one? Why have multiple design departments when you can have one? Why use multiple payment methods when you can have one?
But when you are trying to take newspapers from one company and move them to another company, it becomes a bit of a problem. Because you are not, in effect, moving newspapers. You are moving pieces of one company and grafting them onto an existing corporate structure of a completely different company. Moving one newspaper might not have been such a big deal, but 38?
I don't know a whole lot about how the whole thing went down with the dailies, because I haven't written for any of them since months before the sale took place, and I don't really have any sources there. But I can tell you a lot about what it looked like for Pioneer Press newspapers. Not everything - there is stuff I can't tell, and there's stuff I just plain don't know, but I'll try my best.
For the first few weeks, there were barely any changes to speak of. All the websites remained the same, we got paid the same way, the submission process was the same, the papers carried Sun-Times media house ads and STM-wide advertising inserts, and Classified ad pages made references to Wrapports-owned classified services rather then Tribune Company's CarrierBuilder and Cars.com. Even our bylines still made references to "Sun-Times Media." Remember the copyright weirdness I mentioned in the follow-up post? It pretty much stayed the same way. In Pioneer Press newspapers, we got the new "Chicago Tribune Media Group" copyright notice on the front page, but the legal information on the second page still had the old "Sun-Times Media Group" information. The notice on the editorial page still instructed readers to send letters to the Sun-Times Building address. This was especially weird since, as you may remember from the previous posts, all of the editorial staff moved to the Tribune Tower as soon as the sale was complete.
One thing that did change were the web addresses. Under Sun-Times Media, the Pioneer Press newspapers followed the same formula - [name of municipality].suntimes.com (For the dailies, the formula was [newspaper name].suntimes.com). Not long after the sale, the formula was changed to [town/newspaper name].chicagotribune.com. All of the old article links still worked - they just had "suntimes" substituted for "chicagotribune."
And there was another change that only someone as obsessive curious as me would've noticed. You see, in addition to the formula described above, you can also get to the newspapers using what I've dubbed "full-name URLS." For Niles Herald-Spectator, for example, you could type out niles.suntimes.com, or you could type out www.nilesheraldspectator.com. I discovered this long before the sale through trial and error (like I said - obsessive curious). Thing is, the full-name URLS for Pioneer Press shut down still worked. During the Sun-Times days, they redirected to the nearest area newspaper STM still published (so www.palatine-countryside.com, for example, redirected to Buffalo Grove Countryside). But once Tribune took over, they all started redirecting to a since nuked, but rather nifty page of Chicago Tribune website detailing both its existing TribLocal newspapers and the recently acquired newspapers.
A week after the sale, I stopped by the Sun-Times building. You may recall that, a few days earlier, the suburban newspapers were still in the newspaper boxes. By Saturday, there were empty.
And the newspaper delivery room didn't have nearby as many newspapers - and none of the suburban ones.
Well, for the most part.
I was actually kind of surprised to see copies of Neighborhood Star there - not the least because I rarely see copies of it anywhere. To give a bit of background - Southtown Star was created when Sun-Times media merged Daily Southtown and the Star newspapers (a chain of twice-a-week newspapers covering the same territory). The Star newspapers' legacy lives on in "Neighborhood Star" sections that are customized by region. on Sundays, the section is expanded into a full-on insert that serves as a newspaper in its own right.
As weeks went on, more changes started to gradually creep in. Sun-Times Media house ads gave way to Tribune house ads. The bylines started to change - though, at times, it was a bit awkward. I have an issue of Niles Herald-Spectator that has no less than five different types of bylines. ("for Sun-Times Media," "for Pioneer Press," "for Niles Herald-Spectator," "for Chicago Tribune," "Special to the Tribune") By next week, they settled on "Special to Chicago Tribune" (for articles) and "for Pioneer Press" (for photographs).
By mid-November, I heard something that confused me. It came from a second-hand source, but I second-hand source I had a reason to trust. Up until that point, I assumed that the design staff for suburban newspapers moved to the Tribune Tower along with the editorial. It turned out that they stayed in the Sun-Times building. And there were some kind of issues communicating between design staff and the editorial - and I got strong hints that this was on purpose, because (supposedly) Wrapports was worried that Tribune wold get access to Sun-Times Media's advertising information.
Over a month later, I would get a confirmation that the design staff was still at the Sun-Times Building from a more direct source, but that source didn't want to get into details as to why.
In my first post about the sale, I wondered about some of its implications. Over the course of the rest of November, I started getting answers.
First, the question of High School Cube. As I mentioned in that post, the sports sections of Pioneer Press newspapers (and some of the dailies) were rebranded to as "High School Cube News," after the high school sports broadcasting site Wrapports got a stake in back in 2012. Since High School Cube remained a Wrapports property, the papers obviously couldn't keep using it. Well, after a few weeks, the branding vanished, and the Pioneer Press sports sections were simply retitled "Sports," in a font that suggests it was something the design team slapped together at last minute. The content itself, as far as I can tell, remained the same.
Then, there's the question of TribLocal newspapers, Tribune's network of suburban newspapers. In a lot of areas, the dailies and the Pioneer Press newspapers overlap. There doesn't seem to be much point for Tribune to keep, say, TribLocal Park Ridge-Des Plaines and Park Ridge Herald-Advocate. I have wondered if Tribune would kill Pioneer Press newspapers in overlapping areas, because TribLocals are, quite frankly, much cheaper to produce (they are smaller, there are fewer freelancers to pay, etc).
But then, I learned that TribLocal was worried about the opposite thing happening. The way I heard it, Tribune higher-ups have been talking up their new acquisition and their growth potential, and that made TribLocal staff nervous. There were tensions, and TribLocal covered some of the same stuff Pioneer Press newspapers did because (supposedly) TribLocal staff didn't want to communicate with their Pioneer Press counterparts any more than they had to.
In December, we found out that another change was in store. As I mentioned earlier, when the sale happened, we still got paid the same way as before. What I didn't realize was that Sun-Times Media was still paying us - but Tribune will be paying us starting January 1. So we had to sign up for a brand-new system that even editors weren't familiar with. Which required paperwork, new agreements, etc.
While it was... challenging (to put it nicely), it did give me a chance to stop by Pioneer Press' new office in the Tribune Tower.
Now, a trip to the Tribune Tower was an adventure in on itself. At the Sun-Times Building, you could just have your editor wave you in. But at the Tribune, you needed to check in the front desk, where they called my editor to get a confirmation that I really was seeing him. I needed to show my ID, and I got a temporary ID badge. But once I was cleared, I went down the elevator area.
And took one of the fancy elevators...
...up to the 9th floor
After I failed to take the picture of the Sun-Times newsroom before it was emptied out, I was determined to get a picture of this newsroom. But... I ultimately chickened out. The closest thing I got was a picture right outside of it.
I will tell you that I'm really curious what this room was originally used for. There were several rows of desks where editors of Pioneer Press newspapers and some of the dailies worked from. Over in the western corner of the room, there was a bulletin board outlining what stories different papers were working on. Over on the east side, there was a small meeting room. And when I say "small," I mean "ridiculously small." For the few of you who've been in my studio apartment - imagine that. Now divide it by a half.
It's hard for me to judge if the main room was an improvement over Sun-Times newsroom. I think it was bigger than the Pioneer Press section of the Chicago Sun-Times newsroom in terms of total square footage, but not by much.
Closer to the door, there was an entire table filled with copies of Pioneer Press and daily newspapers.
Along with a generous stack of complimentary copies of Chicago Tribune.
Looking through them, I noticed that, aside from the Tribune, all issues were days old. I soon figured out that they did get the most recent issues - they were just right outside the door.
Back at the Sun-Times Building, there was an employee who took all the newspapers and sorted them into boxed. At Tribune, the employees had to sort them out by themselves. And they were too busy, you know, putting the newspaper together.
I spent a few hours in the newsroom, finishing up one article and writing another. But after a while, I headed out.
On my way downstairs, I saw the floor directory and noticed that the newsroom wasn't on it.
At the time I figured that, hey - they'll just add it later. But it turned out that they probably didn't add the newsroom because they knew it wouldn't be around for long. On January 7, the news broke that they would be moving to offices in the Freedom Center, the Tribune's printing plant.
I haven't been there yet, but once I make it, you'll be sure there will be pictures. Because there's no way I'm not photographing this newsroom.
The day I visited what turned out to be Pioneer Press' temporary newsroom, I decided to stop by the Sun-Times building. And it was... weird. For the first time ever, I felt like I was trespassing.
It doesn't help that, when I got to 10th floor, I saw that the newspaper boxes were gone.
Which makes sense, I suppose - having two newspaper boxes outside would just be sad. But still... it was a shocking sight. After all those years, they were just... gone.
They also boarded off the former game room.
And cleaned up the former 9th floor newsroom space a bit. Just a bit.
Part of me can't help but wonder... My "Farewell, Bright One" post got quite a bit of traction across Chicago media Twittersphere. Did somebody at Wrapports upper management notice?
Oh well. I cashed my last check from them weeks ago.
Speaking of checks... As the payment system switched over to the Tribune, I figured that the transition was over. But no. As 2015 dawned, Pioneer Press newspapers still had Sun-Times Media legal info on the second page, still carried Sun-Times Media advertising inserts and still had obituaries and classifieds done through Sun-Times.
But soon, I found out that more changes were on the horizon. The weeklies and the dailies were all moving to new websites. Since, as I mentioned earlier, the websites the papers had when Tribune bought them still had design elements developed by Sun-Times Media/Aggrego, and I didn't think Wrapports would let Tribune use its intellectual property for free. While every Sun-Times Media website revamp tended to lead to previous versions (and all the articles that they contained) getting nuked, Tribune said it would bring the articles over to the new site. Which they did. To a certain, very limited extent. As best as I can tell, they just brought over articles from December/January.
The transition took place in the end of January. The websites switched to what I call the "LA Times template" (because the template, which Tribune has been slowly but surely converting all of its newspaper websites to, was originally unveiled on Los Angeles Times' website). Well, that's not quite true. Because what took place wasn't, strictly speaking, a switch.
When RedEye switched to LA Times template a few weeks ago, it was still its own entity. An entity that looked an awful lot like Chicago Tribune, but it was still its own website.
But what they did with the ex-STM websites was similar to what they did with TribLocal websites - they became sections of Chicago Tribune's website. Which caused problems. I'm not going to elaborate on most of them, because I remain hopeful that Tribune's web design people will figure them out in the next few weeks. But I will point out one thing.
Let's say someone gave you a link to an article from Skokie Review. You read it, liked it and you want to read more from Skokie Review. Now, if you want to read more news articles, where would you click? The news in a big blue bar on the left? Well, no - that would take you to Chicago Tribune's news pages. You need to click on "Skokie News" link on the top right corner.
Say what one will about Pioneer Press under Sun-Times Media, but the websites were entities in their own right. There were links to the Chicago Sun-Times website, but they were on the bottom of the page, where they could be easily ignored. But with Tribune, they are right there, prominent. Which is good for the Tribune, I suppose - more people reading its articles - but it does kind of undercut the papers as their own entities. Especially the dailies, which are, at least in theory, supposed to be full-fledged daily newspapers like Chicago Tribune.
In fairness, part of the problem is that they took the set-up from TribLocal and tried to build on that. I have less of a problem with TribLocal being put in subordinate positions like that, because they are small weekly papers that were always presented as the extension of the Tribune. It's in the freaking name.
But after Tribune said all the nice things about the value of the ex-STM papers and desire to grow them, this seems... disappointing.
All I'm saying is that, if Tribune did what it has done with RedEYe and gave the dailies their own sites, I would have less apprehension. Pioneer Press is trickier, because of the obvious overlap with TribLocal, so I'm kind of torn on that.
Speaking of PIoneer Press and TribLocal - once Pioneer Press was transferred, the pages for TribLocals that had the same coverage area as Pioneer Press were merged with the pages of its Pioneer Press counterparts. The company still prints both TribLocals and Pioneer Press newspapers, but now, some of the stuff from Pioneer Press papers gets reprinted in their TribLocal counterparts.
What will happen several months down the line is anybody's guess.
Because the papers are now part of the Chicago Tribune's website, the URL template was changed, too. Now, it's http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/[town/newspaper name]. Which is a lot to type - which is why, since the shift, the company has been directing people to the site using full-name URLs.
It's always nice to see something obscure come to the forefront. :)
On February 2, the final step of the changeover took place. All of the ex-STM newspapers were changed. The dailies were changed from the more square-like tabloid format to the larger broadsheet format. Which meant that it was now possible to print more articles per page. The papers, it should be noted, were originally broadsheets, but Sun-Times Media changed them into a tabloid format to match Chicago Sun-Times. Tribune has been billing it as a sign of its commitment to making the papers stronger and better - and information I have suggests that they do want it - but the change also benefits the company from a simple economic perspective. having the papers the same size as Chicago Tribune means that the paper will have a much easier time putting the same ads in more papers. As I've written many, many times before - the more papers the ads are going to show up in, the more profitable they will be for the company.
All papers got new nameplates. Some were only slightly different, while Naperville Sun was changed substantically. As for Southtown Star, its name was changed to Daily Southtown and its nameplate was changed to harken back to the pre-merger logo. According to Southtown's Twitter account, they are still going to keep the Star sections.
Because Pioneer Press newspapers come out on Thursdays, we didn't get to see the changes until Thursday, February 5. Like the dailies, they got similar, but somewhat different nameplates. The green stripe under the nameplate was recolored blue. The papers got new content - mostly the stuff that would typically go into Chicago Tribune's Food, Health and Auto sections. Some TribLocal design elements were added, and many Sun-Times Media design elements were replaced with more Chicago Tribune style design, but the general section organization hasn't changed much.
The Sun-Times advertising inserts were gone, though the papers continue to include Wrapports' Splash society and entertainment publication. I suspect that was part of the deal the companies made as part of the sale. The classifieds and obituary sections are now put together by Tribune staff. Suffice to say, any reference to Sun-Times media is gone from the second page.
But there is a sad coda to all of this. Remember how I said that the designers for the dailies and Pioneer Press stayed in the Sun-Times Building? Well, from what I understand, they remained Sun-Times employees. And after the final transition, they were all unceremoniously fired. Some have worked there for years. Others have been around for decades.
And so, I think it would only be fitting to end this post with an image of one of the last front pages the designers put together.
To borrow from an old Russian expression... The Mothership may not remember your hard work and sacrifices. They may not even appreciate how much you gave to Sun-Times Media, how much your work made the newspapers what they are... But I will remember, and and forever.
And I know that, among reporters, photographers, columnists and editors that once got their paychecks from Sun-Times Media, I'm not the only one.
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