* Sun-Times Media to cut $50 million in first half

The plan will include staff reductions, CEO Cyrus Freidheim told employees in a memo Friday. Details of the plan, which will also include “further outsourcing of selected activities and reformatting of our products,” will be finalized and announced next month, he said.
“As you know, 2007 has been a tough year financially for our company,” Mr. Freidheim said in the memo. “To confront these realities, we need to take bold actions — some of which are painful, but I see no alternative.”

* Tribune Editorial: Illinois vs. the law

* Tribune Editorial: Illinois hidden poor

* Health group paying bounty for bar ashtrays

* Hastert wants to help with Chicago’s Olympic bid

* Mayor had no role in sewer firm pact says aide

“It’s completely understandable that people draw a connection between the mayor’s son and any business dealings he has with the city or in the city. The mayor understands that,” Daley’s press secretary, Jacquelyn Heard, said Friday.

“But the mayor loves his son. He is extraordinarily proud of him, and right now that supersedes all else. Right now, the mayor’s focus is on his son about to go to war, and he and rest of the family are supporting him in every way possible.”

* Sun-Times Editorial: CHA jobs plan a work in progress

* Editorial: State should not buy Wrigley

This situation differs from the state building a new stadium for the White Sox 20 years ago. The Sox weren’t rolling in dough and were threatening to move out of state. The Cubs and Wrigley Field are money machines.

Stadium authority chairman James Thompson, our former governor, said a bond sale could finance the Wrigley sale. And according to the Trib story, he thinks the bonds can be paid off without “dipping into taxpayers pockets.”
He thinks.

Before he thinks that might not be the case, let’s abandon this idea now. If someone wants the gold mine that is the Cubs, let them - not us - buy Wrigley Field.

* Keep the state’s paws off Wrigley Field

* ‘World’s cleanest coal-fueled power plant’ could come to Illinois