Times of Northwest Indiana staff report
The Post-Tribune has closed its Porter County bureau in Valparaiso and reassigned its staff to the newspaper's main office in Merrillville.
The closing follows a similar fate for its office in Gary. Office buildings in Merrillville and Crown Point are for sale.
The newspaper has gone through consolidations of operations and restructuring prior to and since its parent company, the Sun-Times Media Group Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March.
The Post-Tribune, which was founded in Gary, closed its office at 1338 Broadway in Gary earlier this spring. The newspaper's parent company also put its Crown Point office and Merrillville main office buildings up for sale. A "for sale" sign recently was placed outside the Merrillville location at 1433 E. 83rd Ave.
The Valparaiso office was located in a suite at 902 Calumet Ave. and now has a closed sign on the entry door. The newspaper had maintained an office in Porter County for decades.
"Sun-Times Media Group has been re-evaluating its real estate needs for all of its newspaper properties across the greater Chicago area, including Northwest Indiana," said Tammy Chase, Sun-Times Media Group spokeswoman.
"The Post-Tribune will continue to vigorously cover Northwest Indiana as it always has," Chase said.
A message left for Post-Tribune Publisher Lisa Tatina seeking comment was not returned Friday.
Daily circulation dropped nearly 8 percent to 55,767 newspapers in the six-month period ending March 31 reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Sunday circulation dropped just under 4 percent to 59,469 newspapers.
The Post-Tribune has reduced staff, outsourced delivery of the newspaper to the Chicago Tribune, outsourced printing of the newspaper to Chicago facilities and moved other work out of Northwest Indiana as a part of its cost-cutting effort.
In a report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Sun-Times Media Group reported operating revenue, which includes advertising, circulation and job printing, fell 23 percent in 2008 compared to the company's 2006 level of $420.4 million.
The company had $79.2 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of 2008, down from $142.5 million a year earlier. In a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, at the end of June, Sun-Times Media Group said it had between $23 million and $24 million in cash.
The U.S. Labor Department recently ruled certain former employees of the newspaper's customer service division at Merrrillville are eligible to receive services under the federal Trade Adjustment Act, a program available to workers displaced due to foreign imports or shifting work out of the United States.
Union employees at the Post-Tribune announced an effort in June to buy the newspaper. Andy Grimm, president of the Gary Newspaper Guild, said it wanted to gain an equity stake in the paper under an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, giving the newspaper important tax exemptions.
"The Post Tribune and all the Sun-Times newspapers are on the sales block, and we see no reason why the new owners should not be the employees," Grimm said in June.
A Sun-Times Media Group spokeswoman didn't confirm or deny the employee group was an interested bidder.