Many of the most prominent sports figures at The Chicago Sun-Times are exiting. That comes amidst 30 overall employees of the newspaper (nearly one in five) agreeing to resign under buyout terms. In sports, those exits include columnists Rick Telander and Rick Morrissey, women’s sports reporter and columnist Annie Costabile, Chicago Bears beat reporter Mark Potash, and Chicago White Sox beat reporter Daryl Van Schouwen, with several of those figures announcing departures on social media Tuesday or before:
I’m taking a buyout at the Sun-Times. After 38 years at the paper, my last day will be Friday. Thanks to everyone — colleagues, competitors, editors … especially Sun-Times readers — who made it such a great ride. I leave w/ gratitude, great memories & a lot of gas in the tank.
— Mark Potash (@MarkPotash) March 18, 2025
-30- pic.twitter.com/Q8J10S9TfN
— Annie Costabile (@AnnieCostabile) March 17, 2025
GLENDALE, Ariz. — This, my 15th spring training covering the White Sox and 37th year with the Sun-Times, shall be the last. Three kids, seven grandchildren and one buyout later, it’s the perfect time to call it a career. The Sox’ last day of camp will be mine as well.
— Daryl Van Schouwen (@CST_soxvan) March 11, 2025
In a remarkably transparent piece for the paper itself, David Roeder covered the wider context of these buyouts. Roeder writes that those involve wider challenges at parent Chicago Public Media, which also oversees local PBS station WBEZ (which had its own massive layoffs last year), and has an expected expiration of some particular grant support at the end of 2026 :
Thirty employees of the Chicago Sun-Times — around 1 in 5 on its payroll — have agreed to resign under buyout terms the paper’s nonprofit ownership offered in hopes of stanching persistent financial deficits.
The departures consist mostly of writers and editors — many with decades of experience. The cuts are the most drastic the oft-imperiled Sun-Times has faced in several years and will bring about recognizable changes to its content, although top leaders said the buyouts ensure there will be no layoffs in the near future.
…Melissa Bell, CEO of Chicago Public Media, said in an interview Tuesday that the Sun-Times — reliant on memberships, print subscriptions and advertising income — has yet to see enough money from everyday donors to offset losses. In 2022, the paper eliminated its online paywall in hopes of boosting audience and encouraging contributions to ensure its coverage remained free for all readers.
Bell, who co-founded the explanatory journalism site Vox.com, became CEO last September and, after a few months, began discussing the need for cutbacks.
…Bell confirmed the number of people leaving but declined to say who they are. She said the exits will save the company $4.2 million annually, a target that satisfies its board. She said that no layoffs are planned.
Bell’s name should be a familiar one to Awful Announcing readers. She was a key figure at Vox Media during their repeated rounds of cuts to sports site SB Nation in particular. And she’s now again overseeing cuts that are having a massive impact on sports coverage.
The losses of figures like Telander (who spent decades at Sports Illustrated before the Sun-Times lured him away in 1995, wrote famed book-turned-movie Heaven Is A Playground, and was one of the largest presences on the Chicago sports scene), Morrissey (another key long-time Chicago columnist, who announced his impending departure earlier this month), and Costabile (who was a national standard-bearer on WNBA coverage in particular) is massive. And that’s to say nothing of the axing of incredible beat knowledge from veterans Van Schouwen and Potash.
An interesting subtext to this is that the Sun-Times has taken an unusual strategy in recent years compared to many papers. In 2022, before Bell’s arrival, the paper eliminated its online paywall to make news free for all readers, a massive contrast to the general industry approach. But, according to paper leadership, the traffic and associated ad revenue there has not been sufficient to keep the outlet going as it was. (However, the union’s questions of the money spent on management positions rather than these actual writers and editors taking the buyouts come with valuable points.)
At any rate, there are now a lot of figures with immense sports journalism experience on the market, especially in relation to Chicago. We’ll see how many of them opt to continue in this field, and where they land.