Extra! Extra! Newspapers kick into high gear for Cubs World Series win

Chicago papers are flying off newsstands, as Cubs fans scramble to get the first newspaper in 108 years with their team and the words “World Series Champions” emblazoned across the front page.

The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, both printed at the Freedom Center in the Fulton River District neighborhood, added hundreds of thousands of copies to their normal circulation numbers.

The Tribune normally prints about 300,000 copies, said Stew Erskine, product supervisor in the pressroom. Overnight Wednesday it printed an extra 400,000 copies.

“We had extra staff, we had three extra presses running,” Erskine said. “We’ve been planning it since we knew they were going to be in the World Series.”

They fired up the presses again Thursday afternoon, adding another 300,000 copies of the Tribune, bringing the total to about 1 million.

The Tribune set up tables in the lobby of Tribune Tower before 8 a.m. to sell copies of the paper, replica press plates and other merchandise.

The Sun-Times printed almost 600,000 extra copies, about eight times the normal amount, said Jim Kirk, editor and publisher of the Sun-Times, in an email. It set up a pop-up shop in the Merchandise Mart to sell the paper and take book orders.

“The last time we came this close to adding this many papers was the day after Barack Obama won the presidential election in 2008,” Kirk said. “Given the high call volume this morning, we will likely print even more.”

As Game 7 of the World Series pushed into extra innings and a rain delay Wednesday night, the printing staff waited. The presses at the Freedom Center also print copies of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, both of which had late runs.

Normally the presses start running at about 11 p.m., Erskine said, but they didn’t start until 1:30 a.m. Thursday. Then delivery trucks made extra runs, taking out their normal loads and coming back for more.

They’ll fire the presses up again Thursday afternoon to print a Cubs special section for the Tribune, set to go out with Friday’s paper, Erskine said.

The presses worked double time when the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup last year, Erskine said, and when Obama won the election.

“But this kind of increase? Never,” he said. “This is crazy.”

Copies of Thursday’s edition of the Tribune are already for sale on eBay for as much as $26.

The suburban Daily Herald newspaper upped the amount of papers it printed for newsstands from about 4,800 to 53,000, said Jim Galetano, senior vice president of circulation.

“And that’s just the newsstands, that doesn’t include the home delivery,” he said. “It’s 10 times the normal rate.”

Front pages of newspapers from Canada to Colombia also heralded the Cubs win.

amarotti@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @AllyMarotti