Tag: Chicago

Jeremy Halbreich to head Sun-Times Media

Former Dallas Morning News Manager and CEO of American Consolidated Media (my former employer), Jeremy Halbreich, is heading to the Windy City.

According to the Chicago Tribune ::

The management shakeup at Sun-Times Media Group Inc. continued Wednesday, as the Chicago newspaper publishing company’s newly installed board tapped one of the company’s directors to serve as chairman and interim chief executive officer.

The new chairman is Jeremy Halbreich, former general manager of the Dallas Morning News and one of three directors elected last month when a dissident shareholder’s successful proxy fight ousted all but one of Sun-Times Media’s sitting directors. As chairman, Halbreich succeeds Raymond Seitz, who lost his seat in January in the proxy fight.

Halbreich founded American Consolidated Media roughly 10 years ago after he left the Dallas Morning News. The newspaper group grew and was sold to Macquarie Media Group (for $80 million) a few months before I left the Waxahachie Daily Light (an ACM owned paper).

With the money and backing of the Australian Macquarie Media Group Halbreich told the Dallas Business Journal that “ACM has grown into the fifth-largest community newspaper group in the U.S.”

Halbreich remained as CEO of American Consolidated until August 2008 when he stepped down and Liam Stewart, an ACM asset manager, was appointed interim CEO.

“Now that the planned acquisition and expansion phase of ACM is complete, it is an appropriate time for me to step down from full-time responsibilities,” Halbreich said at the time of his resignation.

Some have suggested that the Macquarie Media Group purposely purchased up many of the smaller-town newspapers along I-35 in order to help control the local media as it relates to the Trans-Texas Corridor (aka the suggested Mexico to Canada toll road). Macquarie Bank (MMG’s parent company) is heavily invested in toll projects around the US and many expect them to play a roll in many future projects as well.

Chicago says, “We’ll keep your change”

From WiseBread:

Chicago is testing a coinless parking meter system, The Tribune reported yesterday. You might think that would be great for consumers, eliminating annoyances like the hunt for coins and the need to pay for more time than you actually use.
It’s true, drivers would no longer have to plug the meter with change. But apparently the City of Chicago considers parkers’ tendancy to overpay more of a feature than a bug. In fact, the city is apparently so consumer-hostile that it plans to keep parkers’ overpayments and charge the next customer for the very same time.

The city claims their losing thousands of dollars from people “piggy backing” off time that’s unused from previous cars.
In other words, if you pay for 30 minutes in the parking meter and leave after 20, the city claims that anyone who parks there and uses/takes advantage of those remaining minutes left on the meter is costing the city money. They think they should be able to charge two people for that same parking spot during those left over 10 minutes. With the new meters, the time on the meter will be wiped clean every time a car leaves with minutes remaining on the clock.
Just another example of a governmental authority taking all they can from Joe Citizen.
Seems like many politicians would believe that the salary you get is actually their money and anything you get to take home is simply, “the cost of doing business” and of course, like any good business man, they’ll do all they can to lesson the cost of doing business.

… it’s sounding better and better.