Daily Herald lets Tribune do the driving

Daily Herald

Daily Herald

Officials of the Daily Herald won’t say how many jobs will be cut when the company shifts its home-delivery operation to the Chicago Tribune.

Starting September 15, the Daily Herald will turn over delivery to home subscribers in the north, northwest and west suburbs to Chicago Tribune Media Group under a joint newspaper circulation agreement announced last week. Terms were not disclosed.

Scott Stone, president and chief operating officer of Daily Herald Media Group, said the company was not releasing exact numbers of jobs affected by the transfer. The Daily Herald is owned by Paddock Publications, a privately held company based in Arlington Heights.

“We have more than 200 people in our circulation department committed to delivery of the newspaper, the vast majority of them are independent delivery contractors,” Stone said in an email. “We expect the bulk of them to transition over to the Chicago Tribune after September 15. The Tribune is in the process of interviewing and determining how to best merge the two delivery operations.”

In addition to its own products, Chicago Tribune Media Group already distributes the Sun-Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Investor's Business Daily.

"Many have questioned why newspaper companies would maintain a system in which individual carriers travel in their cars along the same street delivering their newspapers, in some cases to the same customer," Douglas K. Ray, publisher and CEO of Daily Herald Media Group, said in a statement. "Both Tribune and the Daily Herald agreed that this antiquated process was not only inefficient but did not best serve the subscriber."

Word of the merger closely followed news of a “content sharing alliance” between the Daily Herald and the Sun-Times. The move was prompted in part by the sale of Sun-Times Media Group’s 38 suburban publications to Chicago Tribune Media Group last fall.

“We think this is a great first step in a partnership that will make both publications stronger,” Jim Kirk, publisher and editor-in-chief of Sun-Times Media, said of the deal.