Deja Vu: Now Chicago Tribune Axeing Newsroom Jobs

The Chicago Tribune began informing staff Tuesday it will eliminate around 80 of its current 578 newsroom positions by the end of August and reduce the number of pages it publishes by 13 percent to 14 percent each week.

There also will be a reduction of jobs in other Chicago Tribune departments, but that number was not immediately available. A paper spokesman declined comment.

Because some newsroom jobs have been left unfilled in recent months, the actual number of staffers to exit the paper is expected to be between 55 and 58.

"Like many newspapers, we're feeling financial pressures," Hanke Gratteau, the Chicago Tribune's managing editor for news, said.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[KCFreedom]

Most, if not all major newspapers are not doing any investigative journalism anymore. Most of what they do now is print what someone else has already written, or what the government provides to them. Guess they don't need newsroom jobs anymore.

The Fibune keeps sinking farther down into the depths.

And they wonder why subscriptions keep going down?

[VOTER]

The Chicago Tribune proves news media only need reporters if they are going to

be reporting NEWS!

Soon cable networks will conclude the same thing.

Sorry, my mistake. They already know.

[VOTER]

It is sad watching newspapers slowly disappear.

It isn't only a sign of the times regarding cable television and internet access competition but

more importantly, a sign of partisan politics gone sour, which is a good thing.

There is still a place for a real NEWSpaper.

Hopefully someone has the guts to print it.

My USA Today and Chicago Tribune subscriptions ended several years ago.

Do I miss them?

NO.

Do they miss me? YOU BET!

[HarlDelos]

They're going to reduce page by 13-14% PER WEEK?

Oh, dear! At a 13% reduction per week, you'd go from 100% of the pages in week 0 to 87% in week 1, to 76% in week 2, to 66% in week 3 to 58% in week 4, to 50% in week 5. After 10 weeks, they'd be at 25% of the original size, and after 20 weeks, they'd be at 6% of the original size.

At that point, they could replace their delivery trucks with bicycles, couldn't they?

I would hope that they're planning to reduce their weekly pages by 13-14%, rather than reduce their pages by 13-14% weekly.

My great-grandfather, who lived in a rural Ohio community, would have no other newspaper in his house except the Chicago Tribune. My great-grandmother would have liked to have a local newspaper, for the advertising, but, but the Tribune wasn't just a Republican newspaper, it was the World's Greatest Newspaper (which is where WGN got its call letters.) Calling it a Chicago newspaper is a mistake when it was so widely read across the midwest, not just in adjoining states.

Chicago has long had a reputation for having one of the dirtiest political machines in the country, and it's provided a great service to all Chicagoans, not just to the Republicans in a Democratic city. It's sad to see the Tribune fail, but newspapering is running a buggy whip factory in an Interstate Highway world.

[Eric8869]

The chicago tribune has long been a right wing paper in a left wing town. Good Riddance to the Tribune - I hope is dies a slow death.

[esgabel]

What is sad is that coming from Chicago and being a loyal Sun-Times reader since age 5 some 55 years ago...I will miss the Tribune just as I missed the Daily News. The Tribune got a bad rap on the left, aside from its Republican leanings--the Trib is and was a class act. We are diminished when we limit the venues for other voices--unfortuneately what is limiting our choices is economics. I still read 2 papers a day, local and national, but I get more news from the internet through online news sources which may also dry up as their sponsoring newspapers wither away...it seems like a catch 22. Will we be better off when there are less diverse reporting and opinion sources?

[Eric8869]

A bad rap? Are you kidding me? The Tribune went out of its way to pick Republican candidates even when the Democratic candidate was the better choice. They were always partisan....to the RIGHT.

They even supported the Nazis before we entered WW2.

They are out of step with Chicago........period.