Source: Brian Dolber, The Conversation, July 30, 2017
An investment group led by former Chicago alderman and businessman Edwin Eisendrath and the Chicago Federation of Labor recently pulled off an unusual feat when it acquired the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Department of Justice’s antitrust division oversaw the purchase, for a single and symbolic dollar, of one of the Windy City’s two remaining major daily newspapers and the weekly Chicago Reader – along with their debts and a pledge to invest millions. The transaction prevented Tronc, which publishes the Chicago Tribune, from absorbing its competition and creating a monopoly in the nation’s third-largest media market.
Given the newspaper industry’s declining ad sales and subscription base and unions’ dwindling membership, organized labor’s acquisition of a stake in the Sun-Times may look like two dying institutions trying to save each other.
But as an expert on the history of labor-supported media, I see the purchase as a return to labor’s long tradition in fostering a broader public sphere. ….
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