Cutbacks at Chicago Tribune

According to a memo posted on the Romenesko site from Anne Marie Lipinski, the Chicago Tribune editor, the largest paper in the Midwest is cutting back on its business coverage, among other things, to save money.

Here is the specific wording from the memo, which can be found here: The newspaper will “scale back staffing and coverage in our Business features sections; eliminate two photo positions associated with some of that content.”

Bottom line is this: Such cutbacks are not good for business journalism. Such cutbacks repeated over and over again, like what is happening right now, hurts our craft because it limits the opportunities to display good work. Combined with the news earlier this week that some papers were considering cutting their stock tables to save money, which would also limit the number of business stories in papers, these events are disconcerting and lead me to wonder why this is happening.

Business journalism used to be the last growth industry in the newspaper world. I don’t think that could be said any more. We are heading into uncertain times.