Chicago Public Media (WBEZ) to buy Chicago Sun-Times
January 18, 2022 11:20 PM Subscribe
This is awesome. I would love to be able to pay my local newspaper subscription money to some sort of public media group instead of a hedge fund I know is actively trying to determine how much they can gut the paper before I throw in the towel. Please be a trendsetter and not a unicorn!
posted by the primroses were over at 4:05 AM on January 19, 2022 [54 favorites]
posted by the primroses were over at 4:05 AM on January 19, 2022 [54 favorites]
I wish Ebert could have lived to be here for this.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:17 AM on January 19, 2022 [20 favorites]
posted by wenestvedt at 4:17 AM on January 19, 2022 [20 favorites]
I am excited about this!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:29 AM on January 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:29 AM on January 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Awesome.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:46 AM on January 19, 2022
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:46 AM on January 19, 2022
I hope that model works super well, and then that aggressive media de-consolidation leads to many more such opportunities.
posted by Gelatin at 4:50 AM on January 19, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by Gelatin at 4:50 AM on January 19, 2022 [14 favorites]
The Chicago tech community remains delightfully small: I still think of Chicago Public Media’s CEO as the entrepreneur who started Viewpoints. It’s been a while!
This is great to see.
posted by hijinx at 5:26 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
This is great to see.
posted by hijinx at 5:26 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Please be a trendsetter and not a unicorn!
This very much mirrors WNYC buying/saving Gothamist a couple of years ago and incorporating it as a nonprofit. But it’s not a print paper of course.
I am very hopeful about nonprofit news in general as a model.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:50 AM on January 19, 2022 [14 favorites]
This very much mirrors WNYC buying/saving Gothamist a couple of years ago and incorporating it as a nonprofit. But it’s not a print paper of course.
I am very hopeful about nonprofit news in general as a model.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:50 AM on January 19, 2022 [14 favorites]
When the Field family sold the Sun Times to Rupert Murdoch, Mike Royko called Marshall Field XXIV (or whatever) and called him a "cocksucker." Obviously the paper hasn't been the same since.
I think Royko would be happy about this. I am.
posted by adamrice at 6:26 AM on January 19, 2022 [19 favorites]
I think Royko would be happy about this. I am.
posted by adamrice at 6:26 AM on January 19, 2022 [19 favorites]
adamrice, I remember that time (didn't know about Royko calling MFXIV), and Royko going to work for the Trib (which he hated, but he hated Murdoch even more); the Trib put out ads of Royko saying that the only thing he was changing was his socks.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:36 AM on January 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:36 AM on January 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
I'm still bitter from when the Sun-Times fired all of their photographers, including a few friends, as part of cost-cutting measures. Here's a follow-up from Poynter a year after it happened, and a photo-centric blog looking at how bad the paper's visual coverage was in the aftermath.
Nevertheless, it's great to see investment in local journalism and hopefully a return to quality. Wish more places could follow suit, because it's direly in all corners of the US. Thriving newsrooms have been decimated (or whatever the opposite of decimated is where it feels like 9 of every 10 are gone...) and key editorial roles have been outsourced to centralized newsrooms of the conglomerates that now own what once were locally-owned and operated news organizations.
Sadly the PaperCuts website seems to be long gone and its twitter dormant since 2013; it was a great record of layoffs in American newsrooms.
According to a graph in this Pew Research article about newsroom employment from 2008 to 2020, newspaper newsroom employment in the US went from ~71,000 in 2008 to ~30,000 in 2020. Growth in digital native newsrooms is the only sector that significantly grew in that period, from 7400 jobs to ~18,000. Coupled with the nationalization of the news, I think this means it's much, much harder to know what's happening in your community now.
posted by msbrauer at 7:06 AM on January 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
Nevertheless, it's great to see investment in local journalism and hopefully a return to quality. Wish more places could follow suit, because it's direly in all corners of the US. Thriving newsrooms have been decimated (or whatever the opposite of decimated is where it feels like 9 of every 10 are gone...) and key editorial roles have been outsourced to centralized newsrooms of the conglomerates that now own what once were locally-owned and operated news organizations.
Sadly the PaperCuts website seems to be long gone and its twitter dormant since 2013; it was a great record of layoffs in American newsrooms.
According to a graph in this Pew Research article about newsroom employment from 2008 to 2020, newspaper newsroom employment in the US went from ~71,000 in 2008 to ~30,000 in 2020. Growth in digital native newsrooms is the only sector that significantly grew in that period, from 7400 jobs to ~18,000. Coupled with the nationalization of the news, I think this means it's much, much harder to know what's happening in your community now.
posted by msbrauer at 7:06 AM on January 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
I have been anticipating this for some time. I will be a subscriber and know that the initial period will be critical and just hope they have the runway to take off.
posted by zenon at 7:18 AM on January 19, 2022
posted by zenon at 7:18 AM on January 19, 2022
This is great. As much as I complain about WBEZ, they're a hell of a lot better than pretty much any US public media institution large enough to try this. I can imagine a thousand less likely to succeed versions of this. Cheers!
posted by eotvos at 7:37 AM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by eotvos at 7:37 AM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Maybe during fundraising week they can bring back Wingo!
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:39 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:39 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm very excited. they can absolutely have my money.
Here's a critical early project: fix the Sun Times' famously awful web site.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:02 AM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Here's a critical early project: fix the Sun Times' famously awful web site.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:02 AM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
I would love to be able to pay my local newspaper subscription money to some sort of public media group instead of a hedge fund I know is actively trying to determine how much they can gut the paper before I throw in the towel.
And the primroses were over gets it. I worked at a newspaper for almost a decade, in the advertising and production departments. I had an up close view of the decline during the 2000s. I understand the sentiment you often hear of "support local news, buy a subscription!" However, most papers are corporately owned, so they're going to take that money, send it to the investors, and then fire more people when they once again miss quarterly targets. Subscription revenue doesn't cut it when you're trying to make a profit.
In the early to mid 2000s, things were good. The old days of newspaper print ads were just ridiculously profitable. They were basically printing money. And classified ads were raking in even more. For our mid-sized market, I'd be working on 28-30 pages of classifieds for the weekend issues. Then Craigslist showed up. It didn't immediately kill the classifieds, because the newspapers were still where you went to look for job listings or to see what was on sale if you were looking to buy a car, or rent a place, etc. The ads were still in the classifieds because that's where the readers were. Craigslist had really started taking off in the Bay Area and NYC, but it hadn't gotten that same kind of traction in a lot of the rest of the country. I remember a booklet being passed out called "How To Compete With Craigslist" and that's when I knew the classifieds were going to die. The overheated housing market helped drive the classified sections for a while, especially in 06-07 when the investors decided to start cashing out and they were listing houses that they'd been holding or trying to flip. But the rest of it was withering on the vine. Automotive and jobs were fading. People listing stuff for sale were now migrating to Craigslist. Then the market crash hit and that was about all she wrote. I remember one Sunday section I put together in late 2008 or 2009 where there was one page of automotive and I think six of everything else. There's not even that much now.
Meanwhile, the display ads (the bigger ads you see scattered across the paper) were hitting big problems of their own. The "Majors" category, the big national stores, was a big source of revenue and they were getting hammered. Circuit City closed. Mervyn's closed. Robinsons-May and Macy's merged. Just those few resulted in individual papers losing millions in revenue each year. Furniture stores were closing and those were a big source of revenue. Auto dealers were shifting to online in a big way. Between the classifieds and the display ads getting hammered, the golden days of newspapers were over.
Online was something that it seemed like they'd never be able to figure out. Of course there's revenue in online ads, but they are a drop in the water compared to print. The amount of online impressions you'd need to make up the revenue from even a single quarter page print ad was ridiculous. When it came to the print newspaper, there weren't a lot of options in town, so people bought the paper. When it comes to online, people can get news from anywhere in the world instantly, and social media (ugh) also becomes a primary news source for many (again, ugh.) That meant that they were competing for a completely different slice of the advertising pie, and other companies had the upper hand out of the gate in a lot of cases.
What about subscription revenue? Well, of course that dropped, and then they raised prices to cover for those losses, which drove some more people away. But circulation was never a profit center in most places. You hoped circulation paid for itself.
WBEZ and the Sun-Times will need to figure some things out. For example, I believe I saw on a different story about this that they don't want to reduce print days, but printing a newspaper is EXPENSIVE. Reducing print runs, or reducing print days would help cut this expense. Newsprint costs a lot of money - to give an idea, the Trump newsprint tariffs were expected to raise printing costs at the Tampa Bay Times by $3 million. That's just the increase, they were already paying millions and millions a year for paper. (Side note - the newsprint storage area was always a very impressive sight, as well as the tracks they had to move rolls to the press.) Advertising revenue will still be important because they will need ongoing cash flow to run things. This will be something that's closely watched - even as a non-profit, can they make enough to keep the lights on? I hope so.
I'll be keeping an eye on this. I want this to work. Non-profit news has already shown a lot of promise and this is a chance to make it work in one of the biggest markets in the country.
posted by azpenguin at 8:04 AM on January 19, 2022 [31 favorites]
And the primroses were over gets it. I worked at a newspaper for almost a decade, in the advertising and production departments. I had an up close view of the decline during the 2000s. I understand the sentiment you often hear of "support local news, buy a subscription!" However, most papers are corporately owned, so they're going to take that money, send it to the investors, and then fire more people when they once again miss quarterly targets. Subscription revenue doesn't cut it when you're trying to make a profit.
In the early to mid 2000s, things were good. The old days of newspaper print ads were just ridiculously profitable. They were basically printing money. And classified ads were raking in even more. For our mid-sized market, I'd be working on 28-30 pages of classifieds for the weekend issues. Then Craigslist showed up. It didn't immediately kill the classifieds, because the newspapers were still where you went to look for job listings or to see what was on sale if you were looking to buy a car, or rent a place, etc. The ads were still in the classifieds because that's where the readers were. Craigslist had really started taking off in the Bay Area and NYC, but it hadn't gotten that same kind of traction in a lot of the rest of the country. I remember a booklet being passed out called "How To Compete With Craigslist" and that's when I knew the classifieds were going to die. The overheated housing market helped drive the classified sections for a while, especially in 06-07 when the investors decided to start cashing out and they were listing houses that they'd been holding or trying to flip. But the rest of it was withering on the vine. Automotive and jobs were fading. People listing stuff for sale were now migrating to Craigslist. Then the market crash hit and that was about all she wrote. I remember one Sunday section I put together in late 2008 or 2009 where there was one page of automotive and I think six of everything else. There's not even that much now.
Meanwhile, the display ads (the bigger ads you see scattered across the paper) were hitting big problems of their own. The "Majors" category, the big national stores, was a big source of revenue and they were getting hammered. Circuit City closed. Mervyn's closed. Robinsons-May and Macy's merged. Just those few resulted in individual papers losing millions in revenue each year. Furniture stores were closing and those were a big source of revenue. Auto dealers were shifting to online in a big way. Between the classifieds and the display ads getting hammered, the golden days of newspapers were over.
Online was something that it seemed like they'd never be able to figure out. Of course there's revenue in online ads, but they are a drop in the water compared to print. The amount of online impressions you'd need to make up the revenue from even a single quarter page print ad was ridiculous. When it came to the print newspaper, there weren't a lot of options in town, so people bought the paper. When it comes to online, people can get news from anywhere in the world instantly, and social media (ugh) also becomes a primary news source for many (again, ugh.) That meant that they were competing for a completely different slice of the advertising pie, and other companies had the upper hand out of the gate in a lot of cases.
What about subscription revenue? Well, of course that dropped, and then they raised prices to cover for those losses, which drove some more people away. But circulation was never a profit center in most places. You hoped circulation paid for itself.
WBEZ and the Sun-Times will need to figure some things out. For example, I believe I saw on a different story about this that they don't want to reduce print days, but printing a newspaper is EXPENSIVE. Reducing print runs, or reducing print days would help cut this expense. Newsprint costs a lot of money - to give an idea, the Trump newsprint tariffs were expected to raise printing costs at the Tampa Bay Times by $3 million. That's just the increase, they were already paying millions and millions a year for paper. (Side note - the newsprint storage area was always a very impressive sight, as well as the tracks they had to move rolls to the press.) Advertising revenue will still be important because they will need ongoing cash flow to run things. This will be something that's closely watched - even as a non-profit, can they make enough to keep the lights on? I hope so.
I'll be keeping an eye on this. I want this to work. Non-profit news has already shown a lot of promise and this is a chance to make it work in one of the biggest markets in the country.
posted by azpenguin at 8:04 AM on January 19, 2022 [31 favorites]
I am tempted to subscribe right now to show my support, but it seems like maybe I should wait until the sale is final and the paper is transferred so that the new owners get my money?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:05 AM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:05 AM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
azpenguin, thanks for that perspective!
As a kid in the 1980s, I desperately wanted to grow up and work at a paper. I did hot-wax production at my college paper in 1990-91, and loved it! But I also got into the Internet early, and watched with dismay as newspapers in particular stepped on every rake in the barn, while basically every other industry woke up and pivoted to being online.
I wonder if the printing industry -- which has seen a lot of consolidation of its own (*cough* R.R. Donnelley *cough*) -- could take the duplicate physical plant off the hands of some newspapers and let them concentrate on writing?
posted by wenestvedt at 8:29 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
As a kid in the 1980s, I desperately wanted to grow up and work at a paper. I did hot-wax production at my college paper in 1990-91, and loved it! But I also got into the Internet early, and watched with dismay as newspapers in particular stepped on every rake in the barn, while basically every other industry woke up and pivoted to being online.
I wonder if the printing industry -- which has seen a lot of consolidation of its own (*cough* R.R. Donnelley *cough*) -- could take the duplicate physical plant off the hands of some newspapers and let them concentrate on writing?
posted by wenestvedt at 8:29 AM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Not in Chicago but would love to subscribe just to support journalism
posted by emjaybee at 9:01 AM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 9:01 AM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Useless but fun trivia: The CEO of Chicago Public Media, Matt Moog, is Bob Moog's son.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:46 AM on January 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:46 AM on January 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
I know you all THINK this is a good idea, but don't come crying to me during the fall member drive when half of the front page of the paper is a plea for you to renew your membership.
(I kid. This is great. Please, if anyone can donate enough to allow Minnesota Public Radio to buy out the Star-Tribune, I am all for it.)
posted by caution live frogs at 12:07 PM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
(I kid. This is great. Please, if anyone can donate enough to allow Minnesota Public Radio to buy out the Star-Tribune, I am all for it.)
posted by caution live frogs at 12:07 PM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Houston, too - really does seem to be a nascent path forward ....
posted by thecincinnatikid at 12:17 PM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
The idea that one of the other potential buyers was the Tribune, whose plan would have been to shutter the competition, makes me love this even more. That, and fuck the Tribune, wholeheartedly.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:45 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Ghidorah at 12:45 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
The Trib wasn't great on its best day, but it's so much worse since Alden Capital bought it.
The Atlantic: A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting America's Newsrooms
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:36 PM on January 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
The Atlantic: A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting America's Newsrooms
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:36 PM on January 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
I'm a former Sun-Times journalist (1999-2005) and still know a handful of people there. This is great to see.
posted by fruitslinger at 1:59 PM on January 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by fruitslinger at 1:59 PM on January 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
Perhaps they’ll rename Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me to Out Of The Loop: The Chicago Sun Times News Quiz
posted by Monochrome at 2:05 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Monochrome at 2:05 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
The Trib wasn't great on its best day,
No, it wasn’t. I mean, I did at least get to read some latter day Royko there, and the sports section was good, but replacing Royko with someone like Kass (who seems, mercifully, to be gone now) is one of the all time great drop offs in quality I’ve ever witnessed.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:11 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
No, it wasn’t. I mean, I did at least get to read some latter day Royko there, and the sports section was good, but replacing Royko with someone like Kass (who seems, mercifully, to be gone now) is one of the all time great drop offs in quality I’ve ever witnessed.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:11 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
newspapers in particular stepped on every rake in the barn, while basically every other industry woke up and pivoted to being online.
Did they, though? It seems like pretty much every kind of mass media went a few rounds with the Internet in the late 90s / early 00s, and most of them ended up looking the worse for wear afterwards. Almost every one ended up with a tech company inserting themselves due to the industry's incompetence or reluctance to digitize. (Music ended up with Apple and then Spotify drinking their milkshake, book publishing now has Amazon taking a big cut, TV/Film has Netflix et al, broadcast radio is currently dealing with podcasts and cellular streaming and will likely end up with a permanent competitor in that space.)
With newspapers, though, there's the additional complication of one business (advertising, especially classified and job ads) effectively subsidizing another one (journalism). Craigslist and now Facebook Marketplace on one hand, and Monster/Indeed/ZipRecruiter on the other, basically ate the subsidizing sectors but don't have any interest in funding journalism.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:50 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Did they, though? It seems like pretty much every kind of mass media went a few rounds with the Internet in the late 90s / early 00s, and most of them ended up looking the worse for wear afterwards. Almost every one ended up with a tech company inserting themselves due to the industry's incompetence or reluctance to digitize. (Music ended up with Apple and then Spotify drinking their milkshake, book publishing now has Amazon taking a big cut, TV/Film has Netflix et al, broadcast radio is currently dealing with podcasts and cellular streaming and will likely end up with a permanent competitor in that space.)
With newspapers, though, there's the additional complication of one business (advertising, especially classified and job ads) effectively subsidizing another one (journalism). Craigslist and now Facebook Marketplace on one hand, and Monster/Indeed/ZipRecruiter on the other, basically ate the subsidizing sectors but don't have any interest in funding journalism.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:50 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
this is fucking awesome, and an excellent example of philanthropy working as it should. i really hope they dump the print and just do good journalism, maybe just print sundays. that alone would be heroic.
posted by wibari at 11:44 PM on January 19, 2022
posted by wibari at 11:44 PM on January 19, 2022
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