Tribune Publishing today announced it is buying the Evanston Review, 31 other suburban Pioneer Press weeklies and six suburban dailies from Wrapports LLC, the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but, in a news release Tribune said it had also secured a long-term contract to continue printing and distributing the Sun-Times.
The Tribune in recent years had started a chain of TribLocal publications to compete with Pioneer Press in the suburbs, but radically scaled back that operation when it failed to generate sufficient revenue.
The Tribune leads the Sun-Times in daily circulation by a roughly two-to-one margin, and industry observers have raised questions about whether the sale of the suburban titles will imperil the long-term prospects of Chicago remaining one of the nation’s few cities with competing daily newspapers.
The Evanston Review has suffered sharp circulation declines in recent years as it struggled to compete with the fortnightly print Evanston RoundTable and the online news site Evanston Now.
Related stories
Tribune buys 38 Sun-Times suburban newspapers (Chicago Business)
Tribune buys suburban newspapers from Sun-Times (Robert Feder)
Evanston Review
Well perhaps when the Tribune buys the Evanston Review the paper will actually report Evanston news, ETHS sports updates across the teams instead of buried amidst Loyola, New Trier and other schools, revert to the full Evanston police blotter, record of house sales, etc.
The Review as it stands is a waste of money. I subscribe because I believe in neighbors knowing local news. Let's return the Evanston Review to E-town!
I’m Shocked
How can you says all those things. Sometimes, the Review has as much as 2 pages of Evanston news. Four years ago, I was offered 1 year of the Review for $ 7.50. After 3 months, I cancelled the next 9 months and told them to keep the money. I wrote-off $ 5.00 for a charity deduction. Recycle bins in those days were very small and I didn't have enough space for the paper.
In all truth, I find it sad that the review has sunk so low. I remember the days when it was a very good paper.