June marked the closure of the Freedom Center, a pivotal plant that printed nearly every newspaper in Chicago, including the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and even the local edition of the New York Times.
Opened in 1982, this riverfront facility at Chicago and Halsted has been a cornerstone of Chicago’s newspaper industry for over four decades. The state-of-the-art $185 million plant was billed as the largest newspaper production facility in North America at the time.
After printing its final edition of the Chicago Tribune, the Freedom Center now faces a demolition deadline and planned redevelopment into a Bally’s Casino. Tribune Publishing is shifting printing operations to the northwest suburban Daily Herald plant, which it purchased in May 2023.
For dozens of production workers, some of whom spent decades tending to 10 massive Goss Metroliner offset presses churning out upward of a million copies of the Tribune and other newspapers each day, their Freedom Center career was filled with sacrifice, camaraderie, and by its nature, countless sleepless nights.
Their often nocturnal shifts, working while the city slept to ensure that daily newspapers would arrive each morning, meant missing everything from weddings to school plays. But the workers felt pride in their craft, printing the first draft of history for others to read over coffee.
Declining print circulation in the digital age slowed production, diminished the employee ranks, curtailed raises, and made the sprawling plant expendable under new ownership.
For some long-tenured press operators, the final production runs at the Freedom Center will be the end of the line for their printing careers after choosing a severance package over the commute to Schaumburg. Some reminisced to The Tribune about arriving at the spacious new Freedom Center digs and finding the noise of 10 giant presses running nonstop to be “deafening.”
To commemorate the end of an era in Chicago publishing, we highlight three videos that take you inside the places where news was printed and distributed in Chicago:
A Tour of the Freedom Center
These videos, provided by Media Burn, provide an in-depth tour of the Freedom Center, showcasing the massive printing presses and the intricate process of newspaper production. It captures the hustle and bustle of the facility, giving viewers a sense of the scale and importance of this now-closed plant.
This 1976 tape, produced by Bart Friedman and Nancy Cain under the auspices of Videopolis, provides a window into the workplace and culture of the people who got us our news every day: the workers at the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Station.
The History of the Chicago Sun Times Press Room
This video by Bill Stamets captures the printing of the first Chicago Sun Times edition of the millennium, January 1, 2000. The site at 401 N Wabash was demolished in 2004 and later replaced by Trump Tower.
From Newsroom to Newsstand: The Journey of a Chicago Newspaper
In this video, the Chicago Sun-Times prints the edition announcing the death of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley in 1976, and we also see the news reported by WTTW’s John Callaway.
These videos not only provide a nostalgic glimpse into the past but also honor the dedication and hard work of the people who made Chicago’s newspapers a daily staple in the lives of many.
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