{"id":180126,"date":"2017-07-13T18:23:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T23:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/07\/13\/more-of-this-9\/"},"modified":"2017-07-13T18:23:00","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T23:23:00","slug":"more-of-this-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/07\/13\/more-of-this-9\/","title":{"rendered":"More of This"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tronc, the company formerly known as Tribune Publishing, has failed in its bid to buy the Chicago Sun Times<\/i> and the Chicago Reader<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead, a group of investors, including the Chicago Federation of Labor, purchased the publisher of the two papers, maintaining its independence of one of the largest media conglomerates in the nations:<\/p>\n

In the end, one man made all the difference. <\/p>\n

Edwin Eisendrath, the former Chicago alderman who ran losing campaigns for governor and congressman earlier in his career, just won the most unlikely challenge he\u2019d ever undertaken: He kept the Chicago Sun-Times<\/a> independent and out of the clutches of Chicago Tribune owner tronc. \u201cIt was bashert<\/i>,\u201d Eisendrath told me, using the Yiddish word for \u201cdestiny.\u201d How else to explain the odds he overcame to make it happen?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


On Wednesday, Eisendrath and a coalition of labor unions and individual investors closed on the purchase of the daily Sun-Times and the alternative weekly Chicago Reader <\/a>from Wrapports Holdings LLC. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but sources said the key was securing more than $11.2 million in escow to cover projected operating losses over the next two years. <\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s deal to buy the Sun-Times preserves two independent newspaper voices in Chicago, a rare thing in America these days,\u201d Eisendrath tweeted. <\/a>\u201cWe wanted to make sure that Chicago had a genuine voice with honest and good reporting that connects with working men and women.\u201d <\/p>\n

Eight weeks ago it seemed all but certain tronc would take over the Sun-Times in a move that many believed would have stifled competition and led to the inevitable demise of the city\u2019s No. 2 newspaper. All that stood in the way of the deal was the vigilance of the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. <\/p>\n

Alone in answering the Justice Department\u2019s call for alternative bidders was Eisendrath, backed by the Chicago Federation of Labor and a belief that the Sun-Times was too vital to the life of the city to forfeit its independence.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My guess is that the (probably pre-Trump) DoJ call for bidders had a lot to do with Tronc losing the bid, because it implied a lot of litigation if the two big Chicago papers merged.<\/p>\n

I’d like to see more official moves against consolidation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tronc, the company formerly known as Tribune Publishing, has failed in its bid to buy the Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Reader. Instead, a group of investors, including the Chicago Federation of Labor, purchased the publisher of the two papers, maintaining its independence of one of the largest media conglomerates in the nations: In …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,523,479,437],"class_list":["post-180126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-journalism","tag-monopoly","tag-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}