Small Time: The Shake-up at Chicago Times
So what happened? Revenues for the first year came in 44 percent below those “conservative” projections and expenses 14.5 percent above. Paid circulation, which was supposed to exceed 45,000 by the end of the first year, hit 15,000 instead.
Todd Fandell was one of those directors. Some of the money that put Chicago Times on its feet was his. Some was his dad’s, some came from friends. But more came, and has kept coming, from the Small Newspaper Group of Kankakee. The Smalls controlled the board. So Tom Small emerged from the meeting as editorial director of Chicago Times. Fandell keeps his title (at least until the stockholders meet next Monday), but he has lost his magazine.
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“He wanted to be proud of the paper editorially,” one of the editors told us. “If it suffered, it suffered on the business side. Our news hole was a big one for this size paper. We won all of the awards that you’re supposed to win and then some.”
Small Ideas
You will not find a word raised against Flora Skelly here. In her years as a Reader contributor she gave this paper some of the most thoughtful and skillfully written articles (on black intelligence, medical ethics, the chemistry of the brain, medieval saints . . . ) that it has ever run. She enjoys a fine reputation as a hands-on editor, currently as assistant executive editor of the American Medical News. And she’s a friend. This article is being written on a Kaypro computer she lent us two years ago.
