Depends on the goal: if Ferro's goal was continued, profitable operation of the SunTimes, then, yeah, a candy room was a symbol of his misguided efforts. But if he was looking to attract sweet young things, like a creeper in a windowless van...? "Ferro's Angels" as the
Chicago Mag profile termed them.
Robert Feder's been
tracking Wrapports/Suntimes drain swirl all year. It appeared to be coming to a head in his recent posts re: Wrapports trying to sell off the (now worthless) suburban publications and the provisional plan to dump about 1/3rd of the remaining full-time Suntimes staff sometime early next year.
Neither plan seemed at all viable: Wrapports/Ferro gutted the suburban newspapers, shut-down their offices and laid off folks unwilling to trek downtown (and even some willing to make the trek). All someone buying, say, the Joliet Herald-News would get is a dwindling subscriber list, the nameplate and a smattering of disaffected employees without offices--and a huge stack of bills. What could that possibly be worth? Maybe the newspaper's archive has some value, but the Joliet paper doesn't even have a distinct web presence that could be transferred in a sale, as it's a subdomain of suntimes.com.
Laying off 1/3rd of the overall employees still at the Suntimes after 2 years of constant cuts + top employees leaving for places like DNAInfo and just GettingTFO (Sean Jensen, Thomas Conner, Terry Savage etc) is even less likely to succeed.
But as long as the newspaper(s) continue(s) the losses continue. After buying the then profitable suntimes in December 2011 and slowly gutting it/chasing away anyone of value, Ferro at this point is asking someone to take over losing something north of $2 mil a month on an ongoing basis--not gonna happen.
I'm assuming that's the reason Ferro finally gave up and agreed to a new union contract recently is that he doesn't expect the paper to be operational much longer and so agreeing to a new union deal is mostly meaningless.
http://www.chicagonewsguild.org/ Also likely an attempt to reduce the legal bills he had to be racking up fighting NLRB charges and fired employee lawsuits. Does he really expect any photographer to forgo their right to sue for a mere $2,000?
The talk of former Repub Senator candidate Jack or Jake Ryan's 22nd Century media buying pieces of the Suntimes suburban ops is overly optimistic. Ryan doesn't want to take on the headaches of unionized workers when he can simply take over the turf the defunct Suntimes vacates and have his own people run things.
Same thing for the notion that the Tribune company would even consider buying the headaches and ongoing losses of the Suntimes. The Tribune has been cutting its workforce in major ways and is looking to sell off all newspaper ops themselves. Suntimes going under immediately makes the Chicago Tribune more valuable--without having to assume the obligations and debts of the Suntimes. Candy rooms or no.
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