Chicago Sun-Times sold: Union busters bought it, circulation continues to drop

Put whatever fake spin on it you want but the news that the Chicago Sun-Times has been bought, YET AGAIN, is not good news.

The new owners are former administrators at the union busting Chicago Tribune and you wait. When they take over, it will be a massacre. That's the word in the desolate newsroom at the Sun-Times "offices."

Where will they move them next? And circulation at the Chicago Sun-Times continues to fall. The newspaper continues to falsely claim that their circulation is double what it really is using a slate of hand manipulation of data that includes the circulations of all the little community newspapers that the former publishers cannibalized.

Here's the truth, again, spun in typical newsroom mumbo jumbo (Reporters love to exaggerate the problems of others and pretend their own do not exist):

Circulation has been dropping this year at the Sun-Times and its seven suburban daily papers, according to the latest six-month report by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Through September, average weekday circulation fell more than 30,000, to 389,353, a 7.2 percent decline, while average Sunday circulation was down nearly 21,000, to 400,506, a 5 percent decline.Excluding its branded suburban papers, the Sun-Times' average daily circulation was 236,371, a 5.9 percent decline from its March totals. The combined Sun-Times group ranks 12th overall in average weekday circulation among U.S. newspapers. The Chicago Tribune, which has seen circulation declines slow this year, ranks ninth. 

 And to get the truth about the Chicago Sun-Times, you of course have to go to the Chicago Tribune to get what little truth the media industry is willing to provide, which is not much.

You can CLICK HERE to read the Tribune story. And what about the MOBSTERS and the robber barons and exploiters who have weaseled their way into the Chicago Sun-Times management? Of course, the Tribune won't say much. But you can bet they are still there.

Watch for MORE layoffs once the new management takes hold. The word is they will begin at their primary community newspaper holdings like the Southtown/Star and do their best to preserve the few union jobs at the Sun-Times to avoid an immediate union fight -- although the union is a weak ghost of what it used to be.

-- BT

We reported it first: Sun-Times planning more layoffs, to break the union

As we reported in November, the Chicago Sun-Times announced it is planning more lay-offs to dismiss union employees in an effort to break the back of the union.

Crains Chicago Business has the story, again.

Click here to read out November 28th story.

Click here to read the full Crain's Story.

(Crain's) — Sun-Times Media Holdings LLC, which owns the Chicago Sun-Times and other suburban newspapers, is cutting workers in another round of reductions aimed at slashing costs as the company finishes its move to a centralized editorial and billing system.

Sun-Times CEO Jeremy Halbreich confirmed that some editorial workers and possibly other employees are losing their jobs, but he declined to say how many. This is the "final piece" of the 18 months of reductions, he said. He declined to say whether all employees had been notified at this point.

...

"It has been very stressful," said Jean Lachat, who lost her job as a full-time photographer after 22 years at the company. "Part of me is really relieved to not have to worry about it anymore."

Ms. Lachat said she's not sure if she feels more sorry for those who lost their jobs or those who remain at the company and have to pick up the slack.

The Chicago-based company has cut hundreds of employees in the past two years at its flagship Chicago paper and at its suburban daily and weekly newspapers in centralizing the editorial and customer billing systems, shuttering some suburban weekly papers and outsourcing its printing and delivery to rival Tribune Co.

The company is still in the process of shifting the printing of the Sun-Times to rival Tribune, and those workers involved will be dismissed through January.

- BT

Chicago Sun-Times Bankruptcy Filing document

Take a look at who is owed money and has a claim against the Chicago Sun-Times, which put its owners first above the everyday hardworking employees:

You can click here to view the filing.

-- BT

Chicago Sun-Times continues its slide, begs for investors

The latest in a train of suitors to take the Chicago Sun-Times out on a date is Michael W. Ferro Jr. Ferro, who is a pal with every major corporate bigwig in Chicagoland, owns Merrick Ventures LLC. In terms of money, that's great news for the failing Chicago Sun-Times which has seen a steady decline in their newspaper circulation, under 400,000 in the past month and continuing to fall. Of course, that figure represents about 189,000 newspapers for the Chicago Sun-Times and 200,000 newspapers for the nine suburban papers it absorbed and pillaged for advertising over the years.

You can say with certainty, the Sun-Times drive to cannibalize its stable of community newspapers has kept it afloat at the cost of good journalism.

Now, journalism is to be replaced by corporate greed. Ferro leads a team of well known corporate robber barons who have squeezed industries and jobs over the years. If you read the "Philosophy" page for Merrick Ventures, LLC. (Click here to read it.) No where is there any mention of the public good or the public trust or the public interest. There is nothing in their "philosophy" to even suggest that the Chicago SunTimes, which was once a great newspaper, will be strengthened in the journalism philosophy or that the mission will be to restore the newspaper's long lost credibility.

Benjamin Franklin discerned the keys to making America great and posted many words of wisdom in his Poor Richards Almanac. Franklin's sentiment that, "So much for Industry, my Friends, and Attention to one's own Business; but to these we must add Frugality, if we would make our Industry more certainly successful," applies equally to entrepreneurs and business leaders today as it did to the people of 1757.

To quote Ben Franklin sounds so patriotic, but the truth is that Franklin focused on cutting costs and no media has done more to cut costs by firing employees and destroying families than the Chicago Sun-Times, Laying off 400 workers and then to out-source its printing to the union busting Chicago Tribune is only one example of how little the newspaper cares about its employees.

Merrick will simply make that drive to trim human beings and reduce the news hole and, worse, skewer objectivity to reflect the special corporate interests that are tied to the Merrick Ventures, LLC president, Michael W. Ferro Jr.

No newspaper has work harder to destroy itself than the Chicago Sun-Times. At that, they have been successful. It is but a thin pulp of itself.

- BT

Chicago Sun-Times planning more lay-offs

As profits tumble and news content disappears, the Chicago Sun-Times bosses are planning to cut more editorial positions from the newspaper.

As many as six positions are being eyed for dismissal including two buyouts.

The Chicago Sun-Times has been misleading advertisers telling them they are on the "rebound" (not true) and that circulation is over 450,000. That is an outright lie. Imagine, a newspaper that has to lie to stay in business. And they point fingers at others? Pathetic!

The newspaper's circulation is about 215,000 daily, not including the suburban community newspapers the parent company owns. But the newspaper owners are pushing to increase repayment of their investments hoping that by the time the newspaper closes its doors, they will have recouped not only their investments but also an equal amount in profits.

And the editors do not care.

-- BT

Chicago Sun-Times violating union agreements

Ever since the Chicago Sun-Times started pillaging the regional community newspapers, it has been violating its claim to be a union newspaper. The majority of community newspapers it grabs are non-union. And the Chicago Sun-Times has been using that fact to save money, They have been gutting the community newspapers and fleecing them for their advertising revenues to support their own deteriorating business.

The Chicago Sun-Times takes articles from the non-union newspapers that are written by non-union employees and they publish them in the Chicago Sun-Times, filling valuable editorial content space which has become smaller and smaller in the paper. In other words, space is a premium for new copy and there isn't as much today as there was in the past.

But the worst thing is that the articles they take from non-union writers are replacing articles that could have been written by union writers at the Chicago Sun-Times.

So, by doing this, they have been able to shove union workers aside. And worse, they have used this system to support their policies of firing union writers who are paid at a higher rate than the non-union workers who writing they are exploiting.

You won't see this story in the Chicago Sun-Times because they do not write about or expose their own unethical misconduct and their hypocrisies and double standards. And since they have that big fat-cat contract to the Chicago Tribune to publish the Chicago Sun-Times, at the expense of 400 loyal union printers, the Chicago Tribune won't write about it either. The Tribune has been bought off.

Instead of writing about this, the Chicago Sun-Times has been publishing really stupid and pointless stories about other topics including: the PR for Bank of America. Instead of reporting and criticizing the bank for imposing outrageous ATM card fees, is getting Chicago Sun-Times PR support to boost their image. And there is the ongoing ridiculous charges against the Town of Cicero that, wow, politicians hire their relatives -- like not every municipality government leader is hiring their own relatives too? Amazing waste of news space.

Of course, when it comes to nepotism, the Chicago Sun-Times is right up there hiring their relatives and putting relatives of their business owners in key positions. Nepotism is only bad when someone else does it, not the Chicago Sun-Times.

BT

Union-busting Chicago Sun-Times, more lay-offs and Marin still a hypocrite

Chicago Sun-Times management is mulling a plan to fire editorial workers including two reporters who they believe have been "disloyal" to their newspaper. One is an investigative reporter. Another is a beat reporter. 

The newspaper also reportedly met with the publishers of three of its top non-union community newspaper properties and, to undermine the union, agreed to use more non-union editorial copy from the non-union newspapers.

It's a cute anti-union gimmick. Buy up anti-union newspapers and then use the anti-union workers (exploit them) to fill up copy in the "union" newspaper the Chicago Sun-Times.

The end result is that the Chicago Sun-Times is doing more to bust the union than the Chicago Tribune ever did; not to mention that the Sun-Times fired 400 union workers (including mwaaaah) so that they could save money by publishing at an anti-union printer -- the Chicago Tribune.

Normally, Carol Marin would write about these shenanigans but she has been compromised -- at her own choosing, of course. She is allowed to triple-dip and hold several jobs (at the expense of the union workers who were fired). So Carol Marin is doing very well financially, which makes it easy for her to slam others.

Unethical. Hypocritical. And a true journalism double-standard that the Chicago Sun-Times hopes no one will see.

BT

Sun-Times slanders Braun to promote pals of its questionable business wners

Chicago Sun-Times pit bull poodle Carol Marin is assaulting Carol Moseley Braun. Marin alleges falsely that Braun's campaign for mayor failed to disclose more than $300,000 in spending. That's not true but anything Marin writes is published in the Sun-Times regardless of backup facts.

To make it worse, Marin accused Braun of throwing her elderly campaign worker "under the bus" in order to make Braun look even worse.

Braun simply said that one of her aides was putting the documentation together and may not have recorded everything. That's a far cry from stealing or fiscal mismanagement or violating state laws.

Why is Marin attacking Braun? Because Marin was a backer and supporter of first Gery Chico, but when it looked like Chico was losing to Rahm Emanuel, she was ordered by the newspaper owners (yes, the newspaper is owned by Chicago businessmen and a few mobsters and sultry characters) to switch to Emanuel. And she did.

The people of Chicago are not getting the straight story from the Sun-Times and the Sun-Times is not being fair or ethical. The newspaper has hired 18 people who are related to owners of the Sun-Times, while firing 400 union workers to break the union. They gave the newspaper to the Chicago Tribune to print, which basically means it is the Chicago Tribune that owns the Sun-Times.

Union-busting has always been one of the Sun-Times goals to profit from the dying newspaper.

It's a shame that the Chicago Sun-Times is so pathetic today. Although it "won" a Pulitzer -- it's first ina  long time, it came at the cost of hundreds of families, employee wages and a major part of the newspaper's collapsing ethics.

Boycott the Chicago Sun-Times and tell them you do not support the robber barons who now own it and are destroying it.

The reporters who work there agree but they are afraid to speak up, The Sun-Times union has been gutted by management and pressures from the business cronies and investors who are using the Sun-Times to elect their pals, profit for their businesses and strike out at their foes.

Tragic.

Click here to read Marin's latest PR Release for her friends who hate Braun.

BT

Chicago Sun-Times plays shell game with its circulation numbers

The Chicago Sun-Times, which dissects spoon-fed stories about Chicago and Cook County budgets is playing a shell game with its circulation numbers.

The newspaper claims it has a circulation of 419,000 newspaper on an average day. But, like most stories in the anorexic newspaper, the numbers are fabrications and lies. The 419,000 figure is actually a combination of the Sun-Times and all of its community newspapers that it has purchased to gut and then pillage for advertising revenues.

Faced with bankruptcy, the newspapers has been promoting itself as the 10th largest newspaper in the Midwest, based on circulation and 14th largest in Sunday circulation using the skewered system hoping to fool advertisers. Sunday is traditionally a newspaper's largest circulation day.

But the lie is obvious to anyone who looks.

The real Sun-Times circulation is a meager 251,000 papers for 2011.

That's compared to 486,900 in 2004 (when it previously inflated its numbers to fool advertisers. Read that story?) And that's pathetic.

How does it double it's phony numbers? By adding the circulations of its community newspapers: In addition to the Chicago Sun-Times, the figures include six daily suburban papers — Beacon-News (Aurora), Courier-News (Elgin), Herald-News (Joliet), Lake County News-Sun, Post-Tribune (Merrillville, Ind.) and the SouthtownStar — the three-times weekly Naperville Sun and 32 weekly newspapers published by the Pioneer Press.

One strong boycott would put the newspaper (and its readers) out of their misery.

The lying liars at the Chicago Sun-Times do it again.

Carol Marin's "lost" notes from her PR column on Gutierrez

One of the most controversial members of the US Congress is former cab driver turned Chicago alderman turned Congressman, Luis Gutierrez.

Gutierrez was raking in quite a bundle when his wife was working for the Town of Cicero under convicted felon Betty Loren-Maltese and then later under her seat-warmer and stooge for convicted felon Edward R. Vrdolyak, Romero Gonzalez. She was bringing in cash through her commissions and real estate deals. Until Gonzalez was ousted by Larry Dominick.

Suddenly, Gutierrez is the champion of citizen's rights in the Town of Cicero -- he's never been there or organized any programs to help residents there.

But we have the transcript of the interview Carol Marin did with Gutierrez for her puff piece on the congressman that didn't make it into her column:

Marin: Luoey, can I ask about the money your wife made from the Town of Cicero in real estate commissions?

Gutierrez: No beyitch! I told you we can't talk about my wife and her sweetheart deals and we can't talk about my ties to Tony Rezko. You said you were going to do a puff piece because the Sun-Times has it in for the Dominick administration.

Marin: Hey, I may be the Jerry Springer of newspaper reporting, but I thought we were going to do so advance work to head-off criticism. You know, I don't control all of the reporters here. Just a few and one of them might wake up a do a story on you.

Gutierrez: Look, I told you, just re-write that garbage that was published in El Dia. That's all you have to do. That's all you do do, right?

Marin: I just want to make sure when I write a puff piece that I look like I am being tough and readers don't see through the scam. I have a lot of things going. Political editor here. Political editor at WMAQ TV. Political editor at WTTW Channel 11 ...

Gutierrez: And you complain about double dippers? Any of your relatives working for the Sun-Times. We might as well get in to nepotism.

Marin: We're off track, Louey. Come on. We have a good thing going. You give me dirt, I publish it. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. If I say it's true, it's true. That's why they overpay me the big bucks.

Gutierrez: Look, our deal is you help me get elected and when you retire from the Sun-Times, WMAQ or WTTW or wherever, I'll help you get a job in government in the justice department so you can be close to your buddy there. The stash.

Marin: Well, the Sun-Times is dying. No one is reading the paper. A girl needs some help.



Gutierrez: Look, here's the story. I planned a speech in Cicero and they let me speak. But I don't want to say they let me speak. They changed rooms on me so you can write they tried to censor me.

Marin: Good. Good. Let me write all that down ... censored me ... Okay.

Gutierrez: No one showed up at the speech. Thank God no one covered it. But that doesn't matter. It's not about helping the people. It's about helping me and perception is reality. If the Sun-Times says I was targeted for political retribution, then who's going to challenge it.

Marin: Okay. Give me a second to write it down.

Gutierrez: Not all that beyitch! Write this down. So, my new congressional district is in Berwyn. Now, technically, I can't go there as a congressman or use government resources to promote myself there because I don't represent Berwyn just yet. In 18 months. But, since you won't write that I am violating federal regulations, I can go to Berwyn and basically use my office to campaign.

Marin: Good. That's a good story.

Gutierrez: No beyitch. You can't write that. This. Pay attention. You getting old? So I plan an event in Berwyn and we say that Berwyn cancelled it on orders from Cicero. I slander all my political foes there who kept my wife from making her highly justified and deserving six-figure commissions ...

Marin: highly justified and deserving ... yes. Yea.

Gutierrez: Right? We just say it and it becomes so! That's my motto. We just say it, and it becomes so.

Marin: Kind of like your phony campaign to defend the rights of illegal Mexican immigrants.

Gutierrez: Yes. I know. That's funny, isn't it. I'm Puerto Rican. Puerto Ricans are American citizens. We don't have no stinking immigration problems. So I have to pretend I care for Mexican Americans. And I don't. But you can't write that.

Marin: No. No. I won't write that.

Gutierrez: And I get arrested and who gets the attention? Mexican immigrants who are being harassed by the U.S Government and your buddies in the U.S. Justice Department? No. I get the publicity.

Marin: Great. Where you going to be later Louey?

Gutierrez: I have to keep the government from looking in to me real estate deals.Thank God Blagojevich got in trouble otherwise my goose would have been cooked. Why, what you want?

Marin: I have to run the column past you before I get it published.

Gutierrez: Oh yea. America. Where else can you manipulate the freedoms of the press? Come here baby. Let's have some freedom.

[Remainder of transcript too crumpled to make out.]

Crains Chicago Business pulls the wool off the Chicago Sun-Times mob ties

Crains Chicago Business pulls the wool off the Chicago Sun-Times mob ties

When the Chicago Sun-Times was about to go bankrupt from falling subscriptions and reader complaints, the newspaper publicized that it was up for sale to the highest bidder.

Well, the highest bidder turned out to be a conglomerate organized by the late James Tyree, according to Crains Chicago Business, that included two gambling and waste industry honchos, both controversial and one with ties to the Chicago Mob.

Former Casino Owner Kevin Flynn and dirt-hauler Ed Heila became the largest owners of the newspaper, paying $5 million in 2009 each for a 20 percent stake in the ownership of the publication.

According to Crains Chicago Business:

Mr. Flynn, 43, a repo man today, made news in 2001 when the Illinois Gaming Board rejected his bid to launch a Rosemont casino, saying he and his father, Donald, lied to the panel and let investors with mob ties into the deal. Mr. Heil, 66, who made his fortune in the 1980s on the sale of a waste-disposal business, has taken flak for being a politically connected DuPage County contractor.

Immediately after Flynn and Heil became owners, the newspaper started to fire union workers, many who fought against mob-influence in the newspaper industry. Months later, 400 union printers were fired and the newspaper cut a deal with the devil to have their newspaper published by the rival Chicago Tribune.

There were no headlines in either paper about how the Tribune was working with a mobbed-up company, nor the fact that the union-busting Tribune was glad to see the printer’s union workers laid-off to send a signal to their own employees that being a union member was hazardous to their careers.

Crains reported:

Mr. Flynn, the son of former Waste Management Inc. executive Donald Flynn, started his career innocuously enough, developing a playground company called Discovery Zone Inc. with his father.
In 1996, he switched gears to launch Blue Chip Casino in Michigan City, Ind., and sold it in 1999 to Boyd Gaming Corp. for $273.5 million. Later, his failed Rosemont casino bid spawned a slew of litigation. Today he mainly runs a Chicago-based repossession firm, Renovo Services LLC.
Mr. Flynn, who declines to comment on his casino business and Sun-Times' current operations, says Mr. Tyree persuaded him to invest in the company by inviting him out to breakfast and asking if he'd consider joining in if “30 things happened.” In the following weeks, Mr. Tyree called him with updates, checking items off that list.

Crains wrote about Heil:

Mr. Heil built up a dumping, demolition and road construction company that his parents founded. He sold the dumping segment to Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. in the mid-1980s, reportedly for $62.5 million.
Though he is now semi-retired, his longtime penchant for contributing to politicians in places where his Plainfield-based company, now called E. F. Heil LLC, does government work still attracts attention.
Mr. Heil raised eyebrows when he contributed $50,000 last year to the Illinois House race of a DuPage County board member just before receiving a $23,200 contract from the county. Mr. Heil, who defended his donation at the time, declines to comment.

These are stories you won’t read in the Chicago Sun-Times because the newspaper is notorious for its hypocrisies. They can dish it out but they can’t take it. They claim to uncover corruption but their employees swallow hard not to complain about the hypocrisies that are the newspaper’s ownership.

Mob ties at the Chicago Sun-Times.

Mike Royko would be rolling in his grave right now knowing that a newspaper that showcased his tough columns hammering the mob has now laid down with the fish.

At least the Crains Chicago Business has the ethics and courage to expose the Chicago Sun-Times hypocrisy. Click here to read the story (subscription to Crains required).

-- BT