This week's winners and losers

By Lou Grant | Feb 17, 9:44 PM

Losers: Capital Newspapers. The Company lost a printing contract with the Chicago Tribune. The afternoon Capital Times follows this news within two weeks by announcing it will suspend daily printing operations, go to a twice weekly insert in its long-time morning rival, but mainly, publish on the internet.

[For those keeping track, this is the third, different, name I've used for the same company that remotely published the Chicago Tribune in Madison, Wisconsin.]

A second Loser: The Champaign News Gazette, another afternoon newspaper, announces it will cut jobs and is looking for other cost savings after it too loses a Chicago Tribune printing contract.

I'm not sure: The Chicago Defender, which this week started publishing as a weekly newspaper, ending a streak of publishing as a daily newspaper, hides this little piece in its announcement:

"The Defender has also partnered with a new distribution company and has plans to double its circulation from 50,000 to 100,000. "The new distribution company will allow us the access to get from Milwaukee to Northwest Indiana to Iowa. We want to pick up 3,000 new sites."

Let's see… distribution company… access from Milwaukee to Northwest Indiana to Iowa and 3,000 new sites. There can only be one company: The Chicago Tribune is distributing the Defender. The alternative, Andrew Distribution, has agreements with distributors for sale of the newspaper and usually even then, delivers to Chicago Tribune agents.

How about an announcement? Let's make it official.

Tagged: Chicago Tribune, Chicago Defender