http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/mag/article.pl?id=29367
From this week's Business of Life
Are they scared yet? Staff says no
By: Lisa Bertagnoli March 03, 2008
To the grim satisfaction of many at the Chicago Sun-Times, both Conrad Black and David Radler are now doing penance after a thieving ownership that drained financial resources and creative energy from the newspaper for a decade. But there's little joy in the newsroom, where 40 familiar faces — both well-liked veterans and promising newer staff — are gone, too, after a brutal round of layoffs kicked off the year.
"It's like an exercise in anorexia," says Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times theater and dance critic, who joined the paper 24 years ago. "Each time you think you can't get more skeletal, you do."
Yet despite the constant drip of discouraging news about the publication's future, she and many other longtime employees remain loyal to the scrappy paper. They feel an emotional pull to its mission and don't wish to participate in an exodus of talent. But mostly, they just love their work, with a passion that arguably may be blinding them to reality.
"I have one of the great jobs in the arts," says Ms. Weiss, who attends performances as often as seven nights a week. "It's an honor to cover the kind of work I cover — I don't see any other way to do it."
Sue Ontiveros, a deputy features editor and editorial page columnist, says January's job cuts were "emotional and sad," claiming two of her favorite young employees. Yet the 24-year veteran also sees herself as a Sun-Times stalwart; she's refused two unsolicited job offers since January.
"I always say the Sun-Times is the fourth person at my dinner table," she says. "It's not unusual that I often put the paper before family and other personal concerns. There are so many people who have that dedication."
The paper's situation "doesn't scare me," she adds. "I've been through other sales, and we go on and put out the paper."
Particularly heartening to her was an unusual meeting several weeks ago during which the business-side staff presented its circulation and advertising strategy to the newsroom.
"I felt better that someone was actually paying attention to the business side of the paper," Ms. Ontiveros says. "For a long time, it felt like that wasn't happening." 'A TERRIBLE CONVULSION'
Editor in chief Michael Cooke says the recent layoffs and firings, including the unceremonious dismissal of four editorial board members and two editors, were "the worst thing I've ever been involved in professionally. The paper has gone through a terrible convulsion."
But the meeting with the business side, he says, was meant to show the newsroom that the painful cuts are part of a larger plan to shore up the business until advertising revenue rebounds.
"I've seen the numbers. I buy into (Sun-Times Media Group Inc. CEO Cyrus Freidheim's) business plan," Mr. Cooke says. "When the housing industry comes back, when retail comes back, we have a great future. . . . People want the Sun-Times to continue. It's a bloody good paper and a two-paper town."
Newspaper watchers, though, say the troubles are far more than a cyclical downturn.
"These folks are in denial in terms of the realities facing the newspaper business," says Miles E. Groves, principal at MG Strategic Research Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based media consulting group.
Writer and columnist Dave Hoekstra, 52, joined the newspaper in 1984 and says, "I'm looking at a bunch of empty desks" these days, though the staff rallied during the layoffs: "We went out to lunch a lot."
Mr. Hoekstra's offbeat coverage of night life, music and travel has endured through the tenures of numerous owners, publishers and editors. "Who knows what will happen if and when we get sold," he says. "I have been through a lot of changes here. We survive them."
If getting back to business is now the newsroom's mantra, reporter Andrew Herrmann says, a "galvanizing" point came in early February with the shootings in Tinley Park and at Northern Illinois University, which left a total of 11 people dead. The breaking-news tragedies were a splash of cold water that reminded the grousing staff why they come to work every day.
"There wasn't time to sit around and cry and bitch and moan," says Mr. Herrmann, 47. He was one of six Sun-Times reporters covering NIU, a story that drew international attention. "To see the staff work together and everyone pitching in . . . is one of the beauties of the Sun-Times and what makes it so wonderful to work here."
Mr. Herrmann's wife, Ginny Lee, is an editor at the northwest suburban Daily Herald. "We have had many conversations about what I'm doing, but she understands the appeal and allure of a newspaper job," Mr. Herrmann says. Still, "I can't tell you how many people have said to me, 'Are you okay?' " he adds.
Missing from the city room these days is Esther Cepeda, 33, who was among those laid off based on seniority. She still writes her column, a prominent full page on Hispanic issues, for the paper as a freelancer.
She joined the Sun-Times in June 2006, well aware of the paper's difficulties; several marquee writers, including classical music critic Wynne Delacoma and book editor Henry Kisor, accepted buyouts that year. Still, "it never crossed my mind that these large-scale layoffs would occur," Ms. Cepeda says.
Her last day in the newsroom was in late January. "There's worry," she says of her former colleagues. "The hushed conversations in the hallway . . . people passing along information on how people who have been laid off are doing. The people left behind have had to scrape themselves together."
Editorial board member and 22-year veteran Mike Gillis also was laid off in January. "From mid-December to the day I got laid off, the mood was grim," says Mr. Gillis, 45. "Everybody felt that, not like you had a target on your back, but is 2008 going to be a life-changing year for us?"
"I don't think there's anyone there" who thinks everything will be fine, Mr. Gillis adds. "And it's not just there — it's industrywide. It's not a good time to be looking for a job." COMMITTED TO THE PAPER
Indeed, newspapers nationwide are in miserable financial shape. Both the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times have recently announced sizable layoffs.
"Everyone's looking into the future, and it's foggy," says Sun-Times Managing Editor Don Hayner. "No one sees the clarity of the industry."
Mr. Hayner, a city desk veteran, is a popular leader; other employees describe him as the heart and soul of the newsroom. "Everyone here has got a commitment to the paper," he says. "People actually love this paper."
Every morning now, instead of heading off to the Sun-Times building, Bob Mutter walks to his corner drugstore in Oak Park to buy a copy of the paper. Mr. Mutter spent 24 years on the copy desk and was a union leader from 2000 to 2006, guiding staff through two contract negotiations. In January, he took a buyout.
"I thought about it a lot," Mr. Mutter says, and eventually figured that with the extensive cutbacks, working at the paper "wouldn't be fun anymore." His leaving, too, "would save a job or a job-and-a-half" for a less-senior colleague.
The newspaper "looks good," adds Mr. Mutter, 58. "I'd be interested in who's going to buy it."
And there looms the remaining question: Who would, and what might they do with it?
Theater critic Ms. Weiss holds out the last best hope — that the paper will be bought by someone "with deep pockets" and "a passion for the honor of owning a newspaper." The buyer would need to be "someone with innovative ideas," she says, "who can combine print and electronic media in interesting ways."
Industry watchers have more dour predictions. Younger staff in particular should be updating résumés rather than hoping for a savior, says Mr. Groves, the media consultant. "I'd be taking my skill set and figuring out how to translate that into a different medium," he says. "It doesn't have to be ink on paper."
Should the newspaper group be sold, "I don't think it's going to be a rebirth and then heaven," says Mr. Groves, adding that its smaller suburban publications might prove more valuable than the flagship city paper. The Sun-Times most likely would be folded immediately, "or it's death by 100 pecks."
"This is a very difficult time," he says. "For employees to say they've come back before is to not understand that."
©2008 by Crain Communications Inc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
