The 'Front Page' Becomes the Same Page

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe rough-and-tumble journalism wars that made Chicago a great newspaper town and that were immortalized on Broadway and in Hollywood by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur in The Front Page (1928), lost a little more luster today with the announcement that beginning in September, The Chicago Tribune will print its rival Chicago Sun-Times and seven of the Sun-Times' suburban newspapers, the two papers reported.

The Sun-Times shuttering its $100 million printing center opened in 1999 on South Ashland Ave. will save the struggling daily $10 million, according to its Media Chair Jeremy Halbreich, but also means pink slips for more than 400 employees, most of whom are union members who are receiving state-mandated 60-day notices of termination.

Besides the Sun-Times, the Tribune will print and distribute from its downtown Freedom Center plant the Elgin Courier-News, the Naperville Sun, the Southtown Star, the Merrillville Post-Tribune, the Joliet Herald-News, the Aurora Beacon-News and the Lake County News-Sun.