At Chicago Sun-Times, New Owners Vow Return to Papers Working-Class Roots.
'At a Christmas party in December, Edwin Eisendrath, a former Chicago alderman, bumped into Jorge Ramirez, a labor leader. As guests nibbled on decadent desserts, the two men contemplated an audacious plan.
Should they buy The Chicago Sun-Times, the city’s scrappy but perpetually endangered tabloid?
Less than two weeks ago, their fledgling idea came to fruition, when a group led by Mr. Eisendrath overcame a rival bid by Tronc, the publisher of The Chicago Tribune. The deal not only saved The Sun-Times from possible extinction, but also created a highly unusual arrangement: Labor unions now share ownership of a news organization that covers them closely, in what is still one of the nation’s strongest union towns.
Now that the acquisition has become official, Mr. Eisendrath, a Chicago native who has spent much of his career as a politician and business executive, is laying out his grand ambitions for The Sun-Times. He wants to breathe new life into the newspaper, revitalizing it as a publication that tells stories of the working class and acts as a voice of the people.
The idea is particularly resonant in Chicago, one of the last two-newspaper cities in the country, and the place that gave America Studs Terkel and Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.”
“The North Star, for us, is great journalism that genuinely reflects the lives and interests of the working people of Chicago,” Mr. Eisendrath, 59, said in an interview last week in his downtown office, a room with few trinkets or wall hangings but a sweeping view of the Chicago River.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/23/business/media/chicago-sun-times-ownership.html?ref=business