As Tronc dispatches yet another leadership team, attention returns to bigger questions about the company’s strategies. Can new editor Jim Kirk soothe the riled-up newsroom?
The Tronc rollercoaster continues: Just as it tries to unveil a familiar strategy (“gravitas with scale”!), its top digital leader’s past catches up with him.
Will his attempt to sideline investor Patrick Soon-Shiong lead to consolidated control, or will legal action push back? And did we ever figure out what a Tronc is, anyway?
For all his talk of media reinvention, CEO Michael Ferro’s company is in the same position as lots of newspaper publishers: cutting costs to deal with accelerating print decline.
Its new owner, Sinclair executive chairman David D. Smith, has pushed local TV news hard to the right. Will he do the same with newspapers — a medium he’s called “so left wing as to be meaningless dribble…so devoid of reality and serving no real purpose”?
Swinging from an $80 billion valuation to an existential crisis, in less time than it takes to rewatch five seasons of “The Wire”? That’s Tronc-level management.
Andrew Donohue, Voice of San DiegoNovember 6, 2023
Under new owner Alden Global Capital, there’s no plan for the future. There’s just revenue extraction for as long as a generation of older newspaper subscribers live to keep paying their bills.
Benton, Joshua. "The Chicago Sun-Times, fitting its new public-media ownership, is dropping its paywall." Nieman Journalism Lab. Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, 6 Oct. 2022. Web. 19 Apr. 2024.
APA
Benton, J. (2022, Oct. 6). The Chicago Sun-Times, fitting its new public-media ownership, is dropping its paywall. Nieman Journalism Lab. Retrieved April 19, 2024, from https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/10/the-chicago-sun-times-fitting-its-new-public-media-ownership-is-dropping-its-paywall/
Chicago
Benton, Joshua. "The Chicago Sun-Times, fitting its new public-media ownership, is dropping its paywall." Nieman Journalism Lab. Last modified October 6, 2022. Accessed April 19, 2024. https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/10/the-chicago-sun-times-fitting-its-new-public-media-ownership-is-dropping-its-paywall/.
Wikipedia
{{cite web
| url = https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/10/the-chicago-sun-times-fitting-its-new-public-media-ownership-is-dropping-its-paywall/
| title = The Chicago Sun-Times, fitting its new public-media ownership, is dropping its paywall
| last = Benton
| first = Joshua
| work = [[Nieman Journalism Lab]]
| date = 6 October 2022
| accessdate = 19 April 2024
| ref = {{harvid|Benton|2022}}
}}
