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And Business? That section of the Tribune is now four employees lighter—and there’d been other layoffs before Wednesday. “They don’t care about Business,” said someone who knows the department well. “They’re now a privately owned company and they don’t want to be written about.” With David Greising, Phil Rosenthal, and Greg Burns, Tribune Business still has compelling columnists, but Jim Miller was a workhorse as a straight reporter who specialized in reading and understanding financial documents, and Miller is out.
When editor Gerould Kern published his “You spoke, we listened” report to readers in January, responding to their criticisms of the Tribune‘s revamped design, the report said this: “Visual communication / People are visual learners, perhaps more than ever before. We use photos, images and graphics to convey information and ideas. The new Chicago Tribune is visually exciting.”
There’s no question but that the Tribune is a reduced and more narrowly focused paper, in the sense of a person who cuts off his right hand being more narrowly focused on the left. Whether the layoffs serve a strategic purpose remains to be seen. The payroll in two weeks will certainly be smaller, but does that constitute a strategy?
