Why Sun-Times Media Really Decided to Consolidate Newsrooms
On December 20, 2012, Chicago media columnist Robert Feder reported (first on twitter, then in his column) that Sun-Times Media intends to close down most of its newsrooms and move everybody into Sun-Times building. Sun-Times' Editor-in-Chief Jim Kirk claied that it would help reporters writer better stories, but a closer look suggests that it was something more pragmatic - the company is looking to cut expenses and move their resources somewhere else.
To understand what exactly this implies, it helps to understand how Sun-Times Media works. I'm going to try my best to keep this brief.
Chicago has two major newspapers - Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, which serve as the flagship newspapers for the Tribune company and Sun-Times Media, respectfully. What makes those papers different is that Chicago Tribune has traditionally tried to cover both the city and the greater Chicagoland area*, all in one newspaper. Chicago Sun-Times, on the other hand, tended to be more city-centric. Part of the reason for this is that Sun-Times Media has, during the 80s-90s, acquired a whole slew of Greater Chicagoland newspapers. So, unlike Chicago Tribune, which tried to appeal to everyone in the greater Chicagoland, Chicago Sun-Times could focus on Chicago itself - the other papers could (in theory) provide more detailed and more in-depth coverage for their respective coverage areas.
Today, Sun-Times Media publishes seven daily newspapers, each with its own focus. Aside from Chicago Sun-Times itself, there is Beacon News (which covers the city of Aurora and the nearby suburbs), Naperville Sun (Naperville, obviously), Lake County News-Sun (Waukegan and surrounding suburbs), Courier News (Elgin), Post-Tribune (Northwest Indiana), Herald News (Joliet) and Southtown Star (South Side of Chicago and the nearby southern suburbs). The company also owns Pioneer Press, a chain of weekly suburban newspapers (32 as of this writing - there used to be a lot more) that cover smaller cities, towns and villages throughout Chicagoland.
Even after they were bought by Sun-Times Media, each daily newspaper retained its own newsrooms. Pioneer Press has four newsrooms - one at the chain's headquarters in Glenview and three it inherited from some of the chains they acquired before Sun-Times took over.
Well, Sun-Times wants to put the end to that. Under the proposal by Sun-Times Media EIC, all newsrooms outside Chicago city limits will be closed, and everybody will operate out of the Sun-Times headquarters near downtown.
Now, is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. There days, reporters can write and submit articles from anywhere there's an Internet connection. They don't even really need to come to the newsroom anymore, and there isn't as much need for a newsroom to be close to the coverage area.
At the same time, I'm not convinced having everybody in the same newsroom really benefits Sun-Times, either. In the memo quoted in Feder's article, Kirk talked about how having everybody under the same roof will " help [Sun-Times] become more nimble on the reporting front" and " enable [Sun-Times] to make better use of our limited resource pool." But the question I kept asking is "how?" Kirk insisted that the papers will still focus on their coverage areas, but he never explained how (for example) being able to chat with News-Sun writers would help Post-Tribune reporters write better about Hammond, Indiana. With Southtown Star and Chicago Sun-Times, there is an obvious overlap, so putting in everybody in one place would make sense. But all of the other papers focus on different areas (in case of Post Tribune, a whole other state).
(Pioneer Press is a bit of a different story. Over the past few years, Sun-Times Media has been cutting the chain to the bone, in terms of papers and staff.** Much as I hate to say it, at this point, there may not enough people to justify four different newsrooms. Getting the entire Pioneer Press stuff under one roof may make sense. I also liked the proposal that was floated a while back to fold them into the newsroom of the closest daily newspaper, because there is some overlap between some of the dailies and the weeklies)
The more I read, the more I started to think that something was off.
And as I kept reading, I realized that, once you look past Kirk's talk about pooling reporting resources together, he's mostly talking about cost-cutting, about moving production and design under one roof. While he said that all reporters would keep their jobs, but he didn't guarentee the same thing for production, design and sales staff. I imagine that there were lot of people who'd be losing their jobs, and Sun-Times would be able to save money in the process. Plus, the newsrooms themselves could bring in more money. I have no idea about the ownership deals here - how many newsrooms Sun-Times owns outright and how many it rents - but it would be able to save money on utilities and make some profit off of selling/renting out the buildings/offices, too.
Another thing that struck me was that Kirk kept talking about "digital content," about how they need to produce more content for mobile phones, more apps.*** All of that would, presumably, require more money - money they'd be able to get through aforementioned cost-cutting measures.
So, in the end, what Kirk probably meant to say was "we're cutting our expenses so that we can focus our resources of developing digital content." It wouldn't sound as rosy as the reasons he gave, but at least it would make sense.
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* For the purposes of this post, "Greater Chicagoland" means the six Illinois counties that traditionally made up Chicagoland and Indiana's Lake County.
** But that's a whole other post.
*** He alsos mentioned that print was no longer a priority, and boy does it show. Sun-Times shoud take a cue from its most recent acquisition, the Chicago Reader - it looks great in print and it has a great website. Chicago Sun-Times, on the other hand, tends to look like a mess those days, with ads plattered all over the place, to the point where they are distracting from the news stories. Meanwhile, its website is functional, but unremarkable, and the front page doesn't do a good job of highlighting the stories we're supposed to pay most attention to. But that's a whole other rant.
To understand what exactly this implies, it helps to understand how Sun-Times Media works. I'm going to try my best to keep this brief.
Chicago has two major newspapers - Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, which serve as the flagship newspapers for the Tribune company and Sun-Times Media, respectfully. What makes those papers different is that Chicago Tribune has traditionally tried to cover both the city and the greater Chicagoland area*, all in one newspaper. Chicago Sun-Times, on the other hand, tended to be more city-centric. Part of the reason for this is that Sun-Times Media has, during the 80s-90s, acquired a whole slew of Greater Chicagoland newspapers. So, unlike Chicago Tribune, which tried to appeal to everyone in the greater Chicagoland, Chicago Sun-Times could focus on Chicago itself - the other papers could (in theory) provide more detailed and more in-depth coverage for their respective coverage areas.
Today, Sun-Times Media publishes seven daily newspapers, each with its own focus. Aside from Chicago Sun-Times itself, there is Beacon News (which covers the city of Aurora and the nearby suburbs), Naperville Sun (Naperville, obviously), Lake County News-Sun (Waukegan and surrounding suburbs), Courier News (Elgin), Post-Tribune (Northwest Indiana), Herald News (Joliet) and Southtown Star (South Side of Chicago and the nearby southern suburbs). The company also owns Pioneer Press, a chain of weekly suburban newspapers (32 as of this writing - there used to be a lot more) that cover smaller cities, towns and villages throughout Chicagoland.
Even after they were bought by Sun-Times Media, each daily newspaper retained its own newsrooms. Pioneer Press has four newsrooms - one at the chain's headquarters in Glenview and three it inherited from some of the chains they acquired before Sun-Times took over.
Well, Sun-Times wants to put the end to that. Under the proposal by Sun-Times Media EIC, all newsrooms outside Chicago city limits will be closed, and everybody will operate out of the Sun-Times headquarters near downtown.
Now, is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. There days, reporters can write and submit articles from anywhere there's an Internet connection. They don't even really need to come to the newsroom anymore, and there isn't as much need for a newsroom to be close to the coverage area.
At the same time, I'm not convinced having everybody in the same newsroom really benefits Sun-Times, either. In the memo quoted in Feder's article, Kirk talked about how having everybody under the same roof will " help [Sun-Times] become more nimble on the reporting front" and " enable [Sun-Times] to make better use of our limited resource pool." But the question I kept asking is "how?" Kirk insisted that the papers will still focus on their coverage areas, but he never explained how (for example) being able to chat with News-Sun writers would help Post-Tribune reporters write better about Hammond, Indiana. With Southtown Star and Chicago Sun-Times, there is an obvious overlap, so putting in everybody in one place would make sense. But all of the other papers focus on different areas (in case of Post Tribune, a whole other state).
(Pioneer Press is a bit of a different story. Over the past few years, Sun-Times Media has been cutting the chain to the bone, in terms of papers and staff.** Much as I hate to say it, at this point, there may not enough people to justify four different newsrooms. Getting the entire Pioneer Press stuff under one roof may make sense. I also liked the proposal that was floated a while back to fold them into the newsroom of the closest daily newspaper, because there is some overlap between some of the dailies and the weeklies)
The more I read, the more I started to think that something was off.
And as I kept reading, I realized that, once you look past Kirk's talk about pooling reporting resources together, he's mostly talking about cost-cutting, about moving production and design under one roof. While he said that all reporters would keep their jobs, but he didn't guarentee the same thing for production, design and sales staff. I imagine that there were lot of people who'd be losing their jobs, and Sun-Times would be able to save money in the process. Plus, the newsrooms themselves could bring in more money. I have no idea about the ownership deals here - how many newsrooms Sun-Times owns outright and how many it rents - but it would be able to save money on utilities and make some profit off of selling/renting out the buildings/offices, too.
Another thing that struck me was that Kirk kept talking about "digital content," about how they need to produce more content for mobile phones, more apps.*** All of that would, presumably, require more money - money they'd be able to get through aforementioned cost-cutting measures.
So, in the end, what Kirk probably meant to say was "we're cutting our expenses so that we can focus our resources of developing digital content." It wouldn't sound as rosy as the reasons he gave, but at least it would make sense.
-------------------------------------------
* For the purposes of this post, "Greater Chicagoland" means the six Illinois counties that traditionally made up Chicagoland and Indiana's Lake County.
** But that's a whole other post.
*** He alsos mentioned that print was no longer a priority, and boy does it show. Sun-Times shoud take a cue from its most recent acquisition, the Chicago Reader - it looks great in print and it has a great website. Chicago Sun-Times, on the other hand, tends to look like a mess those days, with ads plattered all over the place, to the point where they are distracting from the news stories. Meanwhile, its website is functional, but unremarkable, and the front page doesn't do a good job of highlighting the stories we're supposed to pay most attention to. But that's a whole other rant.