Progress Illinois

In firing all 28 members of its full-time photography staff, the Chicago Sun-Times is weakening the integrity of the newspaper, according to approximately 50 protesters who demonstrated against the layoffs in downtown Chicago Thursday.

Directing their message toward the company’s executives and chanting “shame on you,” some of the city’s most recognized photojournalists, including Pulitzer Prize winner John H. White, expressed their outrage and dismay during a press conference at the Thompson Center.

“We’re the heartbeat out there,” said White, 68, who worked at the Sun-Times as a photojournalist for 44 years. “We have this intrinsic connectedness with life, and as long as there are people, and people are always going to want to know the news, there will always be the visual. A lot of people can’t read or write, but everybody understands the language of a photograph.” Read more »

Protesters are ramping up advocacy against the potential sale of all or some of the Tribune Company to the conservative billionaire Koch brothers with a nationwide day of action. Meanwhile, the number of signatures on various online petitions has risen to more than 500,000.

“We will not sell our freedom of speech. We will not sell our right to have independent news. We will not sell the City of Chicago,” said Shani Smith, 38, a project organizer with Stand Up! Chicago. “We are here for senior citizens, for children, for working families, and that’s what we stand for. If the Koch brothers don’t stand for it, they most certainly cannot buy the Chicago Tribune.”

Read more »

The ultra conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch reportedly have their eye on purchasing some or all of the Tribune Company, which includes the Chicago Tribune and other major urban newspapers — and that has some local advocacy groups worried.

“It’s hard enough to get our stories covered in mainstream papers from the perspective of working families and communities of color,” said Amisha Patel, executive director of the Grassroots Collaborative, a community-labor coalition focused on racial and economic justice in the state.

The Koch brothers, who Patel said are known for dismantling the rights of workers and working families, would only be interested in purchasing the Tribune Company and its assets so they can “pass something off of it.”

Read more »