April 16--The Chicago Tribune is expanding its weekday opinion and commentary pages in print and online beginning Monday.
The move, announced Thursday, brings the print opinion offering to four pages on weekdays and five on Sunday, with additional content online. It also reflects a growing focus on including more diverse views to generate reader interest, social buzz and, ultimately, more digital subscribers to the Chicago Tribune.
"We see a lot of these commentary pieces resonating with readers, and we can tell that the social media commerce is high," said Gerould Kern, senior vice president and editor of the Chicago Tribune.
The opinion and commentary pages include staff and syndicated columnists, reader letters and pieces from newsmakers. Recent outside contributors have included Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his mayoral opponent, Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, as well as McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook, who explained why the fast-food giant was raising its minimum wage at company owned restaurants.
"It's particularly important and valuable that we get newsmakers, opinion leaders from the Chicago area to write pieces for us," Kern said. "We want to do more of that, where we're getting people from around the Chicago area to provide us with unique perspectives as well."
Marcia Lythcott was named in January to the newly created position of commentary editor for the Chicago Tribune. In that role, she is responsible for assembling offerings from the Chicago Tribune staff and curating contributions from elsewhere, Kern said.
One page will be added to Monday and Tuesday's print editions, bringing them in line with the rest of the weekday editions, which were expanded to four pages last year. The number of commentary and opinion pages have doubled since 2011, Kern said.
Also driving the expansion is a bid to boost digital readership and subscriptions, a priority across all Tribune Publishing newspapers. Kern said the online commentary section has been one of the top performers in terms of premium content.
Tony Hunter, publisher and CEO of the Chicago Tribune Media Group, said expanding the opinion pages was "right down the middle" in terms of the company's strategy to invest in premium content to "drive more people to subscribe digitally and to keep coming back digitally." He also praised the broader journalistic ambitions of an enhanced opinion and commentary section.
"It gives us an opportunity to give divergent views and give people different perspectives on some of these key issues," Hunter said. "We're excited to have a little more canvas to have that opportunity for our readers and our digital users."
rchannnick@tribpub.com
