It's -30- For Stock Tables At 'Sun-Times'

By: E&P Staff The Chicago Sun-Times Wednesday became the biggest daily newspaper to eliminate stock market and mutual funds listings.

The traditional listings were replaced by a two-page summary of financial data called "The Markets." It included listings for the 30 Dow Jones Industrials, a short listing of volume leaders and percentage gainers and losers for stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq Stock Exchange and the Standard & Poor's 500.

Price changes for the 10 most widely held mutual funds will be listed daily, the paper said. Tuesdays through Sundays, the paper will feature pricing data on the most popular mutual fund categories. Wednesday, for instance, the summary included brief charts of the top and bottom mid-cap and emerging market mutual funds.

The paper is retaining a detailed listing of futures trades on the two big Chicago markets, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Many newspapers, including, most recently, The New York Times, have trimmed some market listings in recent years as readers increasingly turned to the Web or cable TV for market information, and as newsprint costs became an increasing concern. The Sun-Times is the biggest, however, to jettison individual stock quotes.

Stock and mutual fund listings are moving to the papers Web site, where the markets report is being expanded at www.suntimes.com/markets.

"Prices for these investments are far more extensive than we ever could provide in the printed Sun-Times," Business Editor Dan Miller said in the paper's announcement. "We also offer readers a password-protected portfolio-management feature that tracks prices for stocks and mutual funds in one portfolio or multiple portfolios."