TV, papers crossing paths in future of news

Two industrywide media business trends crisscrossed last week within Tribune Company. The result Chicagoland will see in about two months is more news on TV, less in print. Tribune Co.-owned WGN-Ch. 9 in Chicago announced it was expanding its news offerings by an hour each weekday beginning in September with the addition of a 30-minute broadcast at 5:30 p.m. and an extra half-hour tacked onto its midday news. A day later the company's Chicago Tribune began informing employees of plans to cut back on both newsroom staff and number of weekly pages, each of which will have shrunk by around 14 percent before Channel 9 adds to its news. The business models are changing, making it increasingly cost efficient to add more newscasts as it is increasingly less cost efficient to print -- and, just as importantly, distribute -- papers. While newsprint prices are up, despite less demand, it doesn't take a Nobel laureate to sense skyrocketing oil prices won't make it cheaper to get printed papers where they have to go.