http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/profile.html

In the 1990s Tribune Corp. began to aggressively pursue the kinds of advertorial “synergies” it had exploited for years in Chicago, believing it could be a giant in any city in which it owned multiple media, even if they turned out ethically-dubious treacle. Here’s Ken Auletta in the American Journalism Review on Tribune’s vision for American journalism *before* it got whacked by Craigslist. This is 1998, and one of the things Tribune thinks it’s doing is taking advantage of the internet:

http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=3273

The big problem, like all other papers, was the loss of classified advertising, the centerpiece of the newspaper business model. In 1999, the Trib had an all-time high of 75 pages of help-wanted classifieds (at the height of the Nineties economic boom) in the Sunday paper. But two years later that total had dropped to 21 amid the tech-bubble bust, a recession and the start of Craiglist. Trib bossman Dennis FitzSimons told me then he had never seen the ad market crater as it did — and that was nothing compared to today.

My favorite section — even more than Sports — was Tempo. They had some wonderful long anchor features on a variety of subjects, including many written by our TrueSlant maven Louis R. Carlozo. But, poof, no more Tempo. Now they’re re-designing the Sports section and Sports web site. We shall see, but the “less is more” philosophy newspapers have adapted doesn’t fool anybody.

I agree about the Sun-Times. They’ve never recovered from Murdoch’s 1984 purchase. And they were a substantial tabloid, too, back in the day — including their own color Sunday magazine, “Midwest.” Again, pages and pages of Marshall Field’s and other big department store ads made it a huge paper. Those are all gone for good, too.