[Editor’s note: This post was taken off-line shortly after it was originally published on May 17. It has been amended and republished to correct factual errors and to include additional information, sourcing, and reporting.]
Asked about the fate of the Reader on Thursday, Sun-Times editor and publisher Jim Kirk offered the following statement via e-mail:
In February 2016, Ferro left the Sun-Times to oversee the company that publishes its longtime competitor. In short order, as the Tribune Company split its broadcast and publishing divisions into separate entities, he rebranded the city’s most storied newspaper publisher with a name that, as John Oliver of Last Week Tonight put it, “sounds like the noise an ejaculating elephant makes.” He acquired Splash from Wrapports and added it to the Tronc portfolio—and now, by the looks of it, he wants to buy back the daily newspaper to which he not long ago relinquished control when he donated his stake to a charitable trust to avoid conflicts of interest.
