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