Ailing Sun-Times Media Group Cutting Board Members

The Sun-Times Media Group has moved to lighten its load--in the board room and on its ledgers--in the face of pressure from top shareholders agitating for change as their investments dwindled to pennies per share.

The parent of the Chicago Sun-Times and dozens of other Chicago-area publications announced Tuesday that Chairman Raymond Seitz and board members Gordon Paris and Graham Savage plan to resign by the end of the year.

Sun-Times Media also plans to de-register itself as a Class A stock in early 2009, a maneuver Chief Executive and Chicago Sun-Times Publisher Cyrus Freidheim Jr. said this summer would save about $10 million annually in lawyering, accounting and paperwork.

Every penny counts, particularly when shares closed Tuesday at 8 cents apiece, putting the company's market value at less than $7 million. The company this month announced a $168.8 million loss in the third quarter.

Read the entire article here.

Comments

[Huffpoor]

Obviously Cyrus needs to go. Figures like Freidheim are brought in with a reasonable set of expectations: to stop the bleeding. With this, he's failed. Probably Michael Cooke needs to go, too. For all that Oprah may say about beautiful front pages, content is being outsourced, reporters and EA's are losing jobs left and right, and from I hear, Cooke has barely been in the office during the past six months.

The only two losers is the hard-working staff at the paper who will have to find new jobs in this terrible economy, and the readers. Send management off to Canada, already.