Sun-Times Media Lays Off Exec Who Put Its Spin on Layoffs

Ironic, isn't it?

Sun-Times Media spokesperson Tammy Chase's job was to put the best light on Sun-Times Media's layoffs, big and small. This week, she got her own notice that the company could no longer afford her services.

Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader talked to her about her experiences:



At Sun-Times Media, "efficiencies" have recently been made right and left. About 50 drivers were laid off when the job of delivering the flagship Sun-Times was turned over completely to the Tribune in September. This month the Sun-Times laid off sports columnist-turned-features writer Carol Slezak and three editorial assistants. Across the 59 daily and weekly papers held by the company, jobs have vanished in editorial, advertising, marketing, and circulation. Last week the bell tolled again at the SouthtownStar, for two receptionists and two salesmen.

Tammy Chase (photo by Andre J. Jackson)

Efficiencies? "That was the general message the company wanted me to put out there," says Tammy Chase. "When you're a journalist you want to tell the whole story. Even if you're not dumping your notebook, you don't want to not cover something if it's really important. In PR you need to be truthful, but you can't say whatever. You need to project the message your company executives want to project. It's a different way of thinking."

After ten years with Sun-Times Media, four of them thinking like a spokesperson, Chase is packing up her desk this week. She's been laid off. It's something she was pretty sure was about to happen when she talked to the Orland Park Patch, and she got the official word a few days later. Sun-Times Media can no longer afford a corporate spokesman—CEO Jeremy Halbreich will now do that job himself.

When things got crazy at work, Chase says, she used to joke that she ought to write a book. If she ever does, I'll read it. She started out as a reporter at a tiny paper in Iowa, went on to Bloomberg, and joined the Sun-Times as a financial writer in 2000. The paper belonged to Hollinger International back then, and Conrad Black and David Radler ran it. Chase never met Black, but now and then she'd ride the elevator with Radler. "He was very tanned and surly looking," she says. If Radler even knew she worked for him he probably also knew she belonged to the Newspaper Guild; Radler, who despised unions, would have considered her a lower life form.

But in late 2006 Chase left the newsroom and the guild. By then Hollinger shareholders had turned on Black and Radler. Black was awaiting trial for fraud over noncompete payments he and Radler had pocketed as they sold off most of Hollinger. Radler had copped a plea and agreed to testify against Black. Nothing was left of mighty Hollinger but the Sun-Times Media Group, and the new CEO was Cyrus Freidheim, the guy who'd turned around the Chiquita banana company.

Chase was Lifestyles editor when Friedheim offered her the corporate job. "You know I edit stories about shoes," she told him. But Friedheim wanted a journalist who'd been around the Sun-Times awhile speaking for the company. Black's trial was a few months away and the calls were about to pour in.

"Shareholders at large were calling," Chase says, "asking, 'How much money do Conrad and his colleagues have out there, and how do we recover it?' We settled with David Radler—we got some money from that. So shareholders wanted to know—what about the other guys?" (Besides Black, two other Hollinger officers were accused of benefiting from the noncompete payments, though on a far smaller scale.)

And if Black got off, shareholders wanted to know, what would that mean for their shares? "A lot of investors were ticked off," says Chase. "They thought he owed the company and the shareholders a lot of money." That's a lot of money as in hundreds of millions of dollars. "You can't blame them for being grouchy," says Chase. "We had the trial. We owed the IRS money. Our potential liability had gotten up to—I think at one point it was $600 million. The investors were understandably worried."

And then there were all the calls from reporters covering Black and the trial. "From Britain. Canada, of course. I was getting hundreds of calls a week—about 50-50 investors to media. It was a shitstorm."

Black was convicted. Revenues plunged. The STMG staggered on, a company desperate to be bought that nobody wanted. "Nobody wanted to take on that IRS thing," says Chase. Early last year investors took over the board and Freidheim resigned, telling the Sun-Times on his way out the door, "If we did go into bankruptcy, that would not mean the end of the company."

What Chase was about to discover is that long before bankruptcy is declared, a company must begin to prepare for it. "We worked on this at least a month in advance," she says. "I'd covered United's bankruptcy as a reporter, and I'd say the restructuring adviser is so and so and the lawyer is so and so, and this happened in court today. But now I saw what the restructuring adviser actually does. It sets up shop and goes through the books. Three people were devoted full-time to this—'OK, here's the people whose bills we'll pay right away and these bills we'll address later.' You have to have people help you on this and these guys are experts."

Ms. Chase, I've been there, I know the feeling of being let go. It's happened to me twice. Good luck in the future.

Bad Idea Scrapped: Chicago Sun-Times Will Not Outsource Copy Desk

Management at the Chicago Sun-Times came to their senses and decided not to outsource its copy-desk operations to Canada or India. The move was considered as an effort to cut labor costs by cutting 30 jobs. In reality, it would have provided a daily dose of embarrassment for the paper as readers struggled through mangled copy.

Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune writes this morning:

If you see the colour, er, color returning to the faces of newsroom staffers at the Chicago Sun-Times, it's because one of their worst nightmares won't be realised, um, realized.

The need to dramatically cut costs to stem losses remains. A plan to outsource copy editing and page designing to Canada or India does not.

Union officials representing Sun-Times editorial employees said management informed them Thursday that the paper is scrapping the radical January proposal to eliminate up to 30 jobs.

The Newspaper Guild was braced for a fight. But, in the interim, a shareholder-led overhaul upended parent Sun-Times Media Group's board and a succession of other changes, including John Barron replacing Cyrus Freidheim as Sun-Times publisher and Don Hayner succeeding Michael Cooke as editor.

"We understand the financial difficulties, but this was a big problem for us, said Thomas Thibeault, executive director of the Chicago Newspaper Guild. "You weren't looking at alternatives to try to save money, you were just putting people out on the street and giving their jobs to people outside our country, and that's pretty bad.

"Their leadership took a fresh look. They get a 10 on my scorecard today. I think that shows good faith. That doesn't mean the problems are over. That doesn't mean the Sun-Times is rich today. That doesn't mean that the guild won't have to fight another battle tomorrow. But what it does mean is the Sun-Times took a fresh look at it, and the only denominator that's really changed is the leadership."

A spokeswoman for Sun-Times Media did not respond to a request for comment.

Chicago Sun-Times Considers Sending Copy Desk to India

The Chicago Sun-Times unit of the Chicago Newspaper Guild has been told that Sun-Times Media Group wants to reduce its union wage and benefit package by seven percent. Union participation in the discussion has been requested by management, and meetings are planned soon.

One of the ideas on the table is to shift the layout and copy-editing functions to India. This would displace 25 to 30 jobs, or roughly 20 percent of the editorial workforce.

“My initial reaction is that is not something we are going to go along with and if that forces them to lay people off, we would prefer they do so under the terms of the contract rather than eliminate an entire group of people,” Bob Mazzoni, the Sun-Times’ Guild unit co-chairman, told Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune on Friday. “They obviously have the option ... [to] go ahead and outsource anyway and we would take it to arbitration.”

Rosenthal also noted in his blog that the company, which last year cut $50 million in costs and this year has said it plans to eliminate another $45 million to $50 million to stem losses, last week proposed a seven percent cut in compensation for all union workers at the Sun-Times and its dozens of sister Chicago-area publications and Web sites.

Sending the copy desk to another continent isn't a new idea, it has been suggested at other newspapers as a cost-cutting measure as far back as 2006. Here's is Joe Grimm assessment in 2006 of the topic as he writes for Poynter. Grimm is a visiting journalist at the Michigan State University School of Journalism.

Copy editors and layout editors are a key component to a newsroom. While city editors and reporters often get the glamour and public recognition, it's the copy and layout editors who are the nigthly unsung heroes. With keen eyes and skill, they turn good copy into great copy, often in minutes under a tight deadline. They draw on their expert knowledge of their local communities to catch libelous and embarrassing mistakes written into stories by reporters and city editors; mistakes that no editor in India could ever find. Without them, there is no web site published or morning paper on the doorstep.

When a news organization sends those jobs across the world, there's no telling how poorly their stories will read. What management has to learn is that when the quality of their product goes downhill because of poor editing, so will readership, especially in this highly competitive environment. And we all know what happens to advertising revenues when readership plummets, don't we?

Jay Mariotti Quits Chicago Sun-Times

In non-convention media news, star Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Jay Mariotti has resigned, saying he sees the writing on the wall in the newspaper industry:

"I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete," he told the competition, Jim Kirk of the Chicago Tribune. "Everyone is hanging on for dear life at both papers. I think probably the days of high-stakes competition in Chicago are over. To see what has happened in this business. ... I don't want to go down with it."

The resignation is just another blow for the Sun-Times. Its famous film critic, Roger Ebert, has been ill for years and its political columnist, Robert Novak, was recently diagnosed with brain cancer.

Mariotti says he made his decision in Beijing covering the Olympics where he saw most of the reporters writing for web sites. He said he would continue to appear on ESPN's "Around the Horn" but has not landed a new gig.