A day after the death of Sun-Times Media Chairman James Tyree, who led the effort to save the local media company from liquidation 17 months ago, the company's flagship Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday laid off several newsroom employees.
Sources said they believed the reduction affected at least four staff members, including media and marketing columnist and blogger Lewis Lazare.
"That was something that had been planned for a while. It certainly had nothing to do with yesterday's news," said Jeremy Halbreich, Sun-Times Media's chief executive officer.
Halbreich did not confirm an exact figure for the cuts, which he said were part of an ongoing effort to centralize certain operations among the company's many area publications.
"It's the continuation of our implementing our system and finding additional efficiencies in terms of being able to do things centrally rather than spread out in eight different directions," Halbreich said. "That's really the basis for it."
Tyree, 53, who was also chairman and CEO of Mesirow Financial, died Wednesday. He had battled health woes for decades, including two near-fatal bouts with diabetes that nearly left him blind, had been diagnosed with stomach cancer five months ago and most recently had suffered pneumonia.
Having gained major concessions from Sun-Times Media's unions on issues that included job security and severance, Tyree in October 2009 led a group of local investors to rescue the local media concern, enabling it to emerge from bankruptcy protection after seven months and Chicago to continue to have two major daily newspapers.
At the time, Tyree said he believed the parent of the Chicago Sun-Times, Pioneer Press suburban weeklies and other Chicago-area newspapers could be run as a viable business, although it had burned through an average of $20 million in cash per quarter from 2006 to 2008.
Halbreich said the investors, who include Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz and Mesirow President and Chief Operating Officer Richard Price, soon will choose a new chairman. And he stressed Tyree's absence will not affect the company's operations or its business strategy, of which this latest reduction is part.
"The plan is still the same," Halbreich said. "The investors are still solid. We don't need to go out and look for any extra money, and we're just going to continue to doing what we've been doing."