News media too trivial to be liberal; the reminisces of a reporter-type person

I get noble ideas occasionally about how being a reporter-type person is my contribution to society, but some of the modern-day world realities make me contemplate that what I do is spread triviality instead.

I still own one, although I can't recall last time I used it

I can’t help but reflect upon what has become of the newsgathering business – and not just because some dink voters these days enjoy the idea their newly-elected congressman committed assault on a British newspaperman.

TOO MANY NEWS people spend too much of their time trying to recycle the stories they’ve already reported into so many venues so as to draw attention to our original published reports. It takes time away from finding new news stories.

Yet I suspect that too many of the people who think they’re being informed by what appears on their social media accounts never bother to go beyond the dinky 140-character blurbs (if they use Twitter) or pithy single-sentence (if on Facebook) accounts to see the real story. It’s no wonder the masses are clueless.

It can be a humbling experience to think that the 1,100-word story I wrote recently out of Gary, Ind., for the Post-Tribune will only capture the public attention for about 20 words – and no more.

It causes a trivialization of the information we gather, which is what leads me to say that the concept of a “liberal” media really is a myth. We have a “trivial” media, with too much space taken up by fluff that fills column inches.

WHICH MAY BE why readership is down, publications shrink to offer less space and the quality of the product declines even further. An endless cycle – even though the ideologues amongst us want to believe it’s because we don’t pander to their narrow thought.

Yet still, I have to confess to feeling the urge to be a reporter-type person. In some ways, the desire to be the eyes and ears of the community is all the more important now in this hyper-partisan era than it was that day some three decades ago that I walked across a stage and was handed a college diploma.

My strongest memory from that day (aside from thinking that our commencement speaker was deadly dull and that it rained during part of the outdoor ceremony) was that I felt pleased in knowing that I had a job interview scheduled for later that week.

Still a comforting sensation

As things turned out, that newspaper in suburban Chicago Heights didn’t think I was totally useless and wound up putting me to work beginning Monday.

THE 30-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of which occurred this week. My first news assignment was covering a plan commission hearing in Orland Park held entirely in executive session (meaning I sat outside while officials met privately) and I had to try to decipher what was taking place inside.

Since then, I’ve had my share of interesting (and historically-significant) moments. But much has changed since the days when Ronald Reagan and Harold Washington were actual living beings, rather than pseudo-iconic figures to differing segments of our society (including the ones most upset we don’t cater exclusively to their ideological beliefs).

For one thing, that Chicago Heights newspaper is no more. Neither is the old City News Bureau for whom I once toiled. United Press International for whom a part of me will always think myself tied still exists in some form, but the old bureaus in Chicago and Springfield, Ill., where I worked are no more.

In fact, I was the one who had to pack up the belongings of that latter bureau when it closed. It’s enough to make me feel like a professional “kiss of death” to news organizations. Perhaps I should keep quiet about it, lest my current employer get paranoid about my potential influence and give me yet another job layoff.

A long-lost image we'd like to keep of ourselves

ALTHOUGH IF I think of the equipment I have used throughout the years, it seems like a collection of antique junk – although I must confess to still owning a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 computer. The famed “Trash 80” that a generation of reporters relied upon to file copy – which can’t do anywhere near what my laptop can these days.

I recall when a “fax” machine was a newsroom novelty and it was considered a revolutionary act that organizations could instantly send us statements or other detailed information. Honestly, I can’t even remember the last time I got a fax. And I’m sure that when I did, it was for something stupid and trivial.

I also recall the habit of always scanning a room for the nearest payphone in case I had to make a quickie call. Actually, I still do that, even though more and more there are no payphones anywhere to be used.

But the ultimate change may be that I actually wrote my first stories on typewriters, whereas one of my contemporary (and about two-decades younger) news colleagues admitted recently to never having touched a typewriter in her life.

IT’S ENOUGH TO make me feel antique. Particularly since some people think these changing tools ARE the significance of the news business, instead of merely new toys to “play” with on the job. As though I endured all that prep time early in life just so I could talk to anonymous schmoes what they think of the latest mindless ramblings of our political geeks.

Even more so than the fact I remember who were Carmen Fanzone and Harry Chappas, while most people merely draw a blank in their eyes at the mention of the one-time infielders who bobbled many a ball on both sides of Chicago but were entertaining in their own unique ways.

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Has it really been a quarter century since the Great Chicago Flood of ’92?

Twice in my life I have seen the streets of downtown Chicago completely deserted. Keep in mind I used to work an overnight shift for the now-defunct City News Bureau, and the Loop doesn’t die out completely even at 4 a.m.

Chicago River wasn't so orderly a quarter century ago Thursday. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

But there was Sept. 11, 2001 when officials had the downtown area evacuated just in case someone was planning something similar for Chicago to what happened that day in Manhattan and at the Pentagon in the Virginia suburbs of D.C.

THEN, THERE WAS the date that occurred 25 years ago Thursday. The date of the Great Chicago Flood. When the basements of downtown Chicago buildings overflowed with water, engineers supposedly contemplated using mattresses to try to plug the hole and a certain generation will not forget the screwiness of that date.

Which in my mind is odd because the “flood” wasn’t really a flood. It was a leak.

As in the Chicago River sprung a leak and water flowed out and into the century-old tunnels that exist beneath the streets of downtown Chicago. When the water filled up those tunnels, the level had to rise to the various sub-basements that exist beneath downtown buildings.

Including the then-Marshal Field’s department store, where we got to hear the famed radio reports about the fish swimming in the basement at Fields.

WE LATER LEARNED that the leak was caused when workers with the Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. that was replacing rotting wooden poles in the river installed a new poll just a little bit off – and wound up puncturing a hole into the tunnel.

This occurred in September of 1991. But it wasn’t until 25 years ago today that the water level became so ridiculously high that we at street level could no longer ignore it.

Personally, I remember working that day from my post at the pressroom of the then-State of Illinois Center. Working the telephones, I was accumulating information that went into the various stories the City News Bureau reported that day. I was vaguely aware that some people were leaving the Loop.

But the level of the evacuation didn’t become apparent until my shift that day was complete and a fresh crew of reporter-types were taking over for the night.

DOWNTOWN CHICAGO CAN be an eerie place when it is deserted and the only activity taking place is the changing of traffic signals from red to green and back again – only it doesn’t matter because there’s no traffic.

No people either.

It was reminiscent of a cheesy film I once saw called “Night of the Comet” in which the passing of a comet somehow unleashes a force that reduces much of humanity to piles of dust – and the few survivors tried to make sense of their lives in the remains of Los Angeles.

It almost felt like a similar force had been unleashed in Chicago – and the city was somehow all mine to do with as I pleased!

THERE LITERALLY WAS no one else around even though there still was daylight in the sky. Not even a newsboy crying out about the “Extra” edition newspapers he had, but couldn’t find anybody to buy (which I did see on Sept. 11, 2001).

Much of downtown Chicago’s life returned the next day, although there were the inconveniences as some places had their plumbing or water service turned off while officials tried to figure out the long-term solution to the problem. I also recall my own place of employment being closed for the day a couple of days later – and we were relocated to the Sun-Times Building. Which since has been obliterated by that giant tacky tower paying homage to His Excellency, Donald the First!

But the Great Chicago Flood where the river didn’t overflow. In fact, where else but in the Second City could a river spring a leak?

It’s all a part of what gives our fair city its unique character. That, and the hot dogs (Only Mustard Ever!!!)

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Do we lose anything by not reading of ‘male blacks’ committing crimes?

For all the people who want to believe we’re in a post-racial world where “white” and “black” don’t carry the same stigmas they used to, the outcry over a rural Illinois newspaper’s decision to back away from racial labels in their crime reporting shows we have a ways to go before we really get to that point.

The Daily Chronicle of DeKalb, Ill., said last week it was going to quit using suspect descriptions in cases where the best the police could come up with was that the would-be defendant was a “male black.”

THEY’RE STILL WILLING to offer a description if they have any details about the person being sought that would mean anything. Eye color. Hair style. Any tattoos or scars. Approximate height or weight.

Something, anything other than just that they’re looking for a “black man.”

Which actually was a pet peeve of mine back in the days when I covered crime full time in Chicago for the now-defunct City News Bureau.

Too many people “didn’t see nuthin’” to the point where a crude “it was a black man” is all too often the only thing police are told.

AND AS THE Daily Chronicle pointed out in its commentary last week that announced the new policy, there are times when people just make up that description.

Perhaps they just want to believe that crime is something natural for black people. Or perhaps they think anyone who is not paler than themselves deserves to be thought of as “black” (as in “non-white”).

Making a point of writing that a criminal suspect is nothing more than a “male black” (if they’re trying to write in legalese, “black male” if they think they’re writing in English).

Which I would argue is just as wrong. “Black man” is better, although equally as vague and pointless a description. After all, not all “males” are human beings. If it really is a male chimpanzee that killed a person, that is a radically different type of story.

YET AS I mentioned earlier, there is an outcry. Facebook and the Daily Chronicle websites are both filled with rants from the public (most anonymous, of course) about how the newspaper is “idiotic” and engaging in PC nonsense.

These people seem to think there’s something significant in knowing that a suspect being sought by the police is a black man, or at least not a white guy. It reinforces the stereotypes they want to believe about our society.

Just like the one person who came up with a posting that is an attempt to parody “ghetto-speak” and claim to be thanking the newspaper for not wanting to acknowledge the reality that black people commit so many crimes.

Which makes me think the only people who really have a problem with this attempt to not clutter up news copy with irrelevant detail are the ones to whom the irrelevance is the reality they want to ram down the rest of our throats.

SO WHAT SHOULD we really think about the DeKalb newspaper’s decision to do something that I wish the old City News Bureau would have done decades ago (City News used to love to pile on excess detail in stories to the point where they often resulted in convoluted copy).

Some people argue that even a pitiful description that a “black man” was involved in a crime is better than nothing, and that a newspaper ought not to be holding back on details.

Yet the reality is that writing a news story is often a choice of picking which details matter enough to make it in the tiny amount of space available on the printed page. (No, the Internet doesn’t really offer more space, since many readers don’t want to scan through multiple computer screens to read a full story).

And a pointless phrase like “black man” with nothing to back it up is just a waste of space!

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EXTRA: It’s all a matter of perspective

Five dead. Or was it six?

Fifteen wounded. Or was it really 10? Or should we be adding another three people who took hits Monday morning?

IT’S ALL ABOUT being able to offer up a holiday body count this Memorial Day holiday weekend. As though people will find it significant to know how many people got caught up in the crossfire; and how fortunate they were to not be among them!

It actually reminds me about my old City News Bureau days knowing that holiday weekends required a special duty – calling up assorted police departments every three hours to put together a running list of how many auto accidents had occurred, along with how many people had actually been hurt or killed.

It makes me wonder if I were a City News kid today, if I’d be doing a body count story instead.

At the very least, we’d have more definitive numbers to rely on.

BECAUSE I COULDN’T help but notice the Chicago Sun-Times story that had five dead and 15 wounded. Compared to the Associated Press dispatch that had six dead and 10 wounded.

Although I found it odd that the AP dispatch attributed information to the Sun-Times story.

The one fact to consider is that those figures were supposedly just for Chicago, the city proper – with one of the shootings being someone who got hit by the police. Published reports gave us accounts of three more shot Monday morning in suburban Dolton.

Literally people who were outside their homes trying to enjoy a Memorial Day holiday when they got caught in crossfire from two other people who happened to be passing through the neighborhood – one in his car and the other on bicycle.

Focusing on different casualties

I’M NOT SURE who to believe in terms of totals, although I’m not sure it really matters. Focusing on the totals has the effect of trivializing the violence. Does it really matter if it’s five or six?

There’s also the fact that the overall total is less than the totals we got a few weekends ago – remember the 36 people shot in a single weekend?

Do you think it consoles the family and friends of any of this weekend’s victims that this weekend’s total came to less than that weekend?

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Chicago homicides at a low in my life; so much for cheap partisan rhetoric

I’ve made it clear before that I’m not among those all hyped up about the rising homicide rate in Chicago – which in 2012 did experience a jolt upward but was far from being anywhere close to a record for urban violence.

So the fact that things seem to have returned to the norm in the now-completed year of 2013 ought to be seen as a plus. The New York Times on Wednesday reported there were 417 homicides in Chicago through Monday.

THERE WERE A couple more on Tuesday, with the final incident in 2013 resulting in a human death being a shooting outside of a store in the Englewood neighborhood. Although the rule of thumb for putting together a homicide tally for the year is that it matters when an incident occurs – not when the person is pronounced dead.

Which means by the end of the week, there could be a few more people added onto the list About 420 slayings for 2013 is the most accurate figure that we can give now. It's an educated guess.

Which, according to the Chicago Tribune means this year will probably go down in the books as being the lowest homicide total since 1965 – the year of my birth.

I’m pushing close to 50 (another year and a half) and this could turn out to be the safest the city has ever been.

ALL THAT MAY well be true. But I’m also realistic enough to know that none of this statistical spin means anything if you’re of the parts of Chicago that are getting hit with the bulk of this violent activity.

And if you’re of a family whose members included one of the approximately 420 deceased, I’m sure it doesn’t matter at all that this is a low – or that 2012 with its 503 homicides was an aberration!

Or that we used to have 900-plus homicides per year in the city back in the late 1980s-early 1990s. It is an era I particularly remember because it is when I regularly wrote about cop-shop stuff for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago. There are still intersections across the city that, in my mind, jolt memories of 26-year-old slayings that too many others have long forgotten.

Englewood ought to warrant our attention

It may well be appropriate that the final violent incident of 2013 occurred around 71^st Street and Vincennes Avenue outside of one of those neighborhood markets that no one outside of Englewood would ever think of shopping at.

MANY OF US wouldn’t even pay attention to this particular incident because of the neighborhood it occurred in.

And those with Englewood ties have probably become so immune to the violence that the masses don’t give a thought to that the only reason the death of 26-year-old Vincent Rogers will be noted was because it occurred with about three-and-a-half hours before Janet Davies could mark the end of 2013 along State Street.

It should also be noted that the urban violence continues even though ’13 is through. The Chicago Tribune reported about shootings in the Fernwood and Park Manor neighborhoods on the South Side.

Four were wounded – although in those cases, the gunmen were Chicago Police patrolmen responding to incidents of shots fired in the neighborhoods.

SO AS WE move forward into ’14 (the holiday’s over – even though I realize there are those who think they’re entitled to do nothing on the job until Monday), we should give a thought about the degree to which we accept violent crimes as part of the status quo.

We as a whole have to take a harsher attitude toward the situation, and not ignore it just because it might not impact our specific home neighborhood.

But more important, going on and on about violence in Chicago just to score cheap political points for someone’s “cause” is even more reprehensible.

Particularly because it tries to make a point that is just factually inaccurate!

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A quarter century passes, but some things about Chicago don’t change

My mind turns back to the time a quarter-century ago when I lived the life of a crime reporter – and let myself become absorbed by the tales of every slaying that occurred in Chicago.

Back in the late 1980s when I was at the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago, there were times when I felt like my car (a bright red Ford Escort that was the most expensive vehicle I could afford on a City News salary) WAS my office.

IT WAS IN those days that I developed a habit that I find I still have. I walk into a strange place, and I find myself looking for a pay phone – in case I have to call the office to report details for a possible story.

Even though I now carry one of those Smartphone thingies, it seems so natural to look for a phone, and I find myself disappointed at the lack of public telephones.

But that’s an issue for another day.

The point being that back during my first year at City News when I was one of the reporters who only briefly checked in with the main office in the morning, I was among the people who hung out in the places most likely to result in crime and criminal activity – which means stories.

KEEP IN MIND that the old City News Bureau was the place that covered every single homicide in Chicago and Cook County, and tried to keep up with the violent activity in the rest of the Chicago area – back in the days when the homicide total in Chicago could get ridiculously close to 1,000 per year.

City News was also the entity that kept in daily contact with the Medical Examiner’s office. I remember when I was the reporter who made the daily trip out to the Near West Side every 5 a.m. – just to see if any of our countless other calls throughout the day had managed to miss something.

This is all scut work. As in the miniscule, often mind-numbing, activity that one has to do in order to be able to stumble across the crime that becomes the heart-warming tale of sadness.

While also quickly learning that most homicides are droll enough that they’re rarely worth more than three paragraphs. And for fear of sounding callous and crass, many of the people whose slayings I wrote about 25 years ago were not pleasant people.

THE WORLD PROBABLY is, and has been, a more pleasant place without them.

If there is a lesson I learned from those days, it is that man is incredibly capable of being callous and cruel toward their fellow man. And under certain circumstances, people can be made to do things they find to be repulsive and would NEVER do otherwise.

But the way you learn all of this is by doing the footwork – getting out into the neighborhoods to see daily activity. Heck, there are some parts of Chicago that I know primarily from having seen them when they were the site of a crime scene a score and five years ago.

There’s nothing new about any of this. You learn about the world by getting out and seeing it.

WHAT INSPIRED ME to write this particular commentary was the DNAInfo.com website, which is including among its reporting an attempt to get at the reality of the just over 200 murders that have occurred in Chicago this year.

They literally have sent reporter-type people out to the homes of every single victim – letting them get at details more than just what caliber firearm was used.

It’s nice. I’m sure they have many interesting stories as a result of their work. And those youthful reporters are gaining some experiences that they will look back on fondly later in life.

But it’s nothing new. It sounds a lot like the dispatches that used to turn up in newsrooms all across Chicago – many of which were used by the broadcasters and newspapers of the city to determine which slayings were worth covering. Some things just never change.

  -30-

Overnight in Chicago is its own world

I never saw anyone watching “Bruce Lee” films while on the job. But then again, it certainly wouldn’t be out-of-character for the kind of people who keep this city alive while most of us are trying to get some sleep.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday on their website about how an inspector general earlier this year decided to conduct “midnight raids” – which consist of just showing up at government offices that are open around the clock.

THEY WANTED TO see just what kind of work – if any – those people were actually doing in exchange for their government-funded salaries.

According to the newspaper, they found one staffer of the medical examiner’s office engaged in the cliché act of any overnight-shift worker – she was asleep at her desk.

Two others were watching Bruce Lee use his martial arts skills to wallop away at a cast of bad guys while speaking very poorly dubbed English.

And yes, they were watching it on a computer monitor that was a part of the Cook County inventory of property.

IN FACT, THE county inspector general’s report indicated that when an investigator showed up at 2:35 a.m. one early morning, they found no one working. Although it would seem that the particular moment was one of those lulls in activity when there wasn’t anything that specifically needed tending to.

Which is what seems to have caused these workers to think they could get away with taking a nap, or watching a film!

Now my own first-hand experience with this kind of life is nearly a quarter-of-a-century old. I was once a reporter-type person with the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago who worked the overnight shift.

For me, 1988 was the year that I rarely saw daylight. And for a few of those months, I was the City News “kid” who showed up at the very same medical examiner’s office five days a week – just to check up on things and see if anything occurred overnight.

ALSO, IT WAS a way to check up on final details of ongoing crime and violence stories.

But the lasting memory in my mind of visiting the county morgue five days a week at 5 a.m. each day was the sight of a pair of guys at the front desk who would while away the slower hours (I almost wrote “dead time”) by watching a portable black-and-white television.

I wonder how many collective hours of bad overnight television those guys watched while staying awake to process the bodies that would come in to the morgue from the urban violence that cares less about the clock.

I know some people are going to argue that the guys who got caught watching a martial-arts film were engaged in some sort of egregious act that wasted county tax dollars.

YET I’M NOT sure if I buy that whole-heartedly (and not just because, according to the Sun-Times, the two employees immediately turned off their computer and quit watching the film when they realized the inspector general’s people were present).

To be honest, I can remember moments working an overnight shift when I napped for a few seconds. One really does develop a sense that jolts them back into consciousness when something happens that warrants their attention.

I didn’t sleep through any news stories while covering crime from midnight to 9 a.m. A part of me wants to give the benefit of the doubt to the morgue workers – that they would have suddenly become alert if a fresh corpse had arrived on the premises and needed to be dealt with soon.

Besides, if a Bruce Lee flick is the worst thing the inspector general’s office can find, then perhaps our county government is fine. Somehow, I doubt that is true!

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Bigger and bigger offers us less and less; are we on eve of (news) destruction?

What happens when they all print the same copy?

I can recall a moment a couple of decades ago when I was chatting with my colleagues at the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago.

The topic was the fact that the Chicago Sun-Times ownership back then seemed eager to bolster the company by buying up more and more publications – particularly in the suburban areas.

“A BLOB EATING everything in its path,” was how one colleague phrased it, and it is a phrase that has managed to stick in my mind throughout the years.

It also was the phrase that popped into my brain Wednesday when I learned of the fact that the Sun-Times has another acquisition in mind. Crain’s Chicago Business used its website to report that the Sun-Times is on the verge of buying the Reader – that relic of the ‘60s (even though it wasn’t created until the early 1970s) that for many years was the publication of choice for people trying to find out how to entertain themselves during the weekend.

Because I can recall when that publication ran in four sections; three of which were detailed classified ad sections that could enable people to find all sorts of ways to amuse themselves – both legit and sordid.

Yes, I recall the days when Chicago police on vice details claimed one of the tools they used to bust escort services for prostitution was to check out who was advertising in the Reader.

THOSE DAYS ARE long-gone. The publication is rather skimpy these days. And any “edge” it ever had disappeared when the current owners (who call themselves Creative Loafing) took over a few years ago.

Now, it seems that the Reader will become a sister publication to the Sun-Times, along with other newspapers such as the Post-Tribune of Merrillville, Ind., and the Herald News of Joliet (just to name a couple).

I don’t pay as much attention to those publications as I used to, mainly because the current mentality that runs the Sun-Times is to treat the copy content of all those publications as one massive effort.

Which usually means that the best copy coming from the SouthtownStar newspaper or the Beacon-News of Aurora will wind up getting reprinted in the Chicago Sun-Times.

WHEN I DO pick up those suburban publications (occasionally, I just can’t resist), I am always amazed at the degree to which they are loaded with Sun-Times copy. How many different times can I read the stories of the long-time City Hall reporter Fran Spielman?

And the Chicago Cubs are an equally pathetic excuse for a baseball club no matter which paper’s pages I’m reading the same story in!

Which makes me think that the Reader is destined to wind up becoming yet another part of this copy-sharing initiative. That might benefit the Sun-Times if the weekend entertainment listings now being published in the Reader (which are still better than most anyone else is doing) wind up being used to bolster the Sun-Times’ weekend entertainment section.

To be honest, that section has become so scrawny as to offer little to read. But it will have the feel to me of offering one less publication to be worth checking out.

I’M SURE THERE is a business model one could throw in my face in which all of this makes sense, particularly since every time someone starts up talk about the Sun-Times being “sold,” it always winds up coming out that they’re looking to sell the complete package.

Anybody who had any interest in buying merely the News-Sun of Lake County (formerly of Waukegan) would have their bid pooh-pooh’ed – if not rudely ignored.

Perhaps it allows the Sun-Times people to configure their circulation figures in such a way that they could try claiming recently that they have surpassed the Chicago Tribune in readership (it takes a lot of fuzzy math to make that claim believable).

But to my mindset, it merely means one less publication – and I’m not sure the improvements to the bottom-line make it worth it.

CALL ME OLD-FASHIONED (or a crotchety old fart, or whatever). But the reason I got into the news business is because I am interested (even still) in creating content that is interesting.

Soon to lose identity?

I’m also silly enough, I guess, to believe that “interesting content” means real news about public policy and events – along with the occasional bit of fluff for levity (although I will forevermore detest animal stories, largely because I have written way too many in my lifetime).

We’re getting less and less these days, and it’s not so much that I think we get too much fluff. I think we get too little of anything, which ultimately is what makes these publications seem like we can get by without reading them. There are times when newspapers feel like they’re taking on the Internet mentality of “aggregating” its content from elsewhere – and thinking that someone else will always be there to provide that content/news copy.

Some two decades later, “the blob” continues to devour. Until the day comes when it has devoured everything, and will find itself starving to death.

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EXTRA: “Phil’s” brethren gave headache I still remember years later

It has been more than two full decades, but I still remember a bit of Groundhog Day aggravation that popped into my life.

It was back in my days with the now-defunct City News Bureau, and I was working a shift on rewrite duty – which meant I got to sit in the office downtown and grind out copy based on notes provided by reporter-types in the field.

BECAUSE THIS WAS a February 2, one of those reporter-types had to make the trip to Brookfield Zoo – where the local officials coordinated an event meant to give us our very own local groundhog to predict our weather, a counterpart to Punxsutawney Phil.

The reporter-type went out there, spoke to some people, observed the stunt, then called in with the story that I proceeded to pound out with "bulletin-like" speed.

As I recall it, the groundhog came out of the hole, ran around this maze that had been built for him, then went back into the hole.

The wire service’s copy reflected that fact – it went back into the hole. With mock seriousness, we reported that the local groundhog went back inside, meaning “six more weeks” of wintry weather. I honestly don’t remember how much longer dismal weather lasted that year.

BUT WHAT I do remember was that officials from the zoo called the wire service about an hour after the City News story was transmitted to clients. They were upset, and not with any mock seriousness like our story was written.

They were peeved.

For they wanted the events interpreted that the groundhog came out of the hole and ran around in the maze. Winter’s over!!!!!!! Yea!

I don’t remember exactly what got written up and transmitted by the editors to account for this “discrepancy.” But the idea that anyone took any of this nonsense seriously still amazes me.

IT WAS NEARLY as obnoxious as the sniping that hospitals can engage in on New Year’s Day as they quibble over which one gave birth to the first baby of the year. It was bad enough that, to this day, I have never been able to sit through the film “Groundhog Day.”

It is one of those reporter memories that has lodged itself in my mind and will not go away – which makes me wonder what significant piece of information will I never be able to remember because this trivial memory is permanently lodged there – taking up precious brain space.

And for the record, that groundhog DID go back into that hole – so I’d still say that the initial report was as accurate as anything can be for a stunt like this.

  -30-

What does a company owe somebody when they shoo them out the door?

I don’t know Pat Bruno – the long-time (and now former) restaurant critic of the Chicago Sun-Times. And I’m really not interested in writing about the way he was let go from his position at the newspaper this week.

But what catches my attention is his comment that he is upset that a higher-ranking editor, if not the publisher himself, should have been the one who gave him the word that he was no longer employed at The Bright One.

I’D SAY HE was lucky to get the human touch at all.

I still remember when my final stint with United Press International came to an end just over six years ago. I got my farewell by e-mail from an editor in Washington.

It was succinct and told me how budgets had just been hacked to pieces and how the wire service could no longer afford to pay me.

It came on an “April 1.” For an instant, I contemplated that this was somebody’s warped idea of a gag. Then I remembered that for UPI, April 1 was the beginning of the new fiscal year.

APRIL 1 TO March 31. They began a new year without me and the commentaries I had written for the wire service about so-called Latino issues for roughly the last three of the dozen years that I purported to be one of those legendary UPI men who was “at the scene” wherever in the world news was breaking.

Then again, I remember my most recent lay-off – one from a company that monitored news broadcasts across the country. I was told face-to-face that I was no longer employed from a boss that was reading from a legal script – the point of which was to get me to sign a document saying I would take an insignificant severance offer and leave without contemplating legal action.

By comparison, an April 1 e-mail seems downright humorous.

Of course, I’m sure there are many reporter-types these days who can tell even harsher stories about being let go. I have never had to deal with a situation where I was escorted out of the building by security, without even being permitted to clean out my desk of any personal possessions.

FOR THAT MATTER, people of just about any occupation who lost their spot on a payroll so that management could bolster the bottom line and pretend that their profit margin still made them a successful company.

Which makes it kind of hard for me to sympathize with anyone who feels a little bitter that they didn’t get the appropriate send-off. Join the club. What makes you think you’re entitled to a fond farewell when so many other people are getting that doorknob in their derriere as security escorts them from the building.

I couldn’t help but notice in the news coverage of Bruno’s departure from the Sun-Times that he says, “I wasn’t expecting roses at my feet, …”

Actually, I’m surprised they didn’t hand him a bouquet of roses – thorns first so that he sticks himself in the process.

SO AS I wrote before, Join the Club! Here’s hoping that Bruno figures out a way to keep himself occupied while also managing to bring in bits of income – just as many people have managed to do with themselves in recent years.

In my case, it is publishing this weblog and its sister site, The South Chicagoan, as well as doing some work for one of the suburban daily newspapers (that in my busiest weeks can match my old full-time weekly income but in my worst weeks seems reminiscent of my old $190-a-week pay at the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago) and writing the occasional free-lance feature elsewhere.

I joke that I have become a literary prostitute. I write for whoever is interested in publishing me. I do it for the money.

And when I write for this site, I do it for the fun of keeping up with the news cycle while also asserting my presence in the public realm (which is probably about as insignificant a speck as Planet Earth is in the overall scheme of the Universe).

IF I’M REALLY going to have to endure a professional life of no security and erratic pay, I might as well do work that I personally enjoy and see a point to.

Which might be the best advice I could offer anyone who is enduring these days a stint of collecting unemployment benefits – just like a former editor of mine who himself wound up losing out on his job just last week.

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Call it the Chicago-style school of hard knocks, one that no longer exists

One of my first jobs after completing a college education was one I often have alluded to in my commentaries published here – I was a reporter-type person for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago.

I was at the local wire service back in the late 1980s into the early 1990s, and my stay there got extended, so to speak, due to the last recession our nation went through. So few places were hiring that I got stuck at a low-paying job a bit longer than I would have desired.

NOT THAT I’M complaining.

Because for me, the end result was that I got to maximize the experience of being a Chicago-based reporter for the old wire service, and it gave me an education in the ways of Chicago that I sometimes think every resident of the metropolitan area would benefit from. It’s definitely a shame that new reporter-types in this city don’t get the experience.

Like many people who were born here, I had a home neighborhood, and a few other places where I knew people (born in the South Chicago neighborhood, and grew up in and around Calumet City). I also had visited some of the tourist-type places downtown that constitute Chicago attractions.

Yet there were also vast parts of this city that I had never set foot in. And I certainly had never bothered to go to places on Chicago’s outer rim such as Waukegan, Woodstock or Crown Point, Ind.

BUT I CAN say that City News sent me to all those places, and many more, as a reporter-type in search of the news.

I can also cite times I had to set foot in the district police stations, churches in ethnic neighborhoods and public housing complexes, some of the latter of which are now ancient history as they have been torn down as part of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s attempts to beautify Chicago.

For me, the 8900 block of South Burley Avenue will always be the place where an intoxicated man tried to tell me at about 3 a.m. that a local tavern fire was started by “Martian-type dudes from outer space,” while breathing the stench of whiskey straight into my face.

I may have started out as a $190 per week reporter ($156.23, after taxes) who routinely complained about my pitiful salary (only to hear my managing editor say how he started out at City News at $29 per week some three decades earlier).

BUT A PART of the payment I got was literally an education in Chicago, which is unique because of its vast diversity in its neighborhoods. The fact that there are places so radically different from each other that can claim to have in common the fact that they both are within the city limits IS the character of Chicago.

Would anyone ever seriously mistake Englewood from Sauganash? And people who live on the East Side think both of those neighborhoods are somehow alien territory.

It put me into a mindset where I believe the people who need to be felt sorry for are the ones who literally know nothing beyond their immediate neighborhood. They would benefit from having suddenly to hop in their car or on a bus to venture into a strange neighborhood and immediately try to figure out who is what.

I literally remember the one time I had to go to Sauganash. I was working the overnight shift in those hours that technically are Sunday but many think are still Saturday night, and there was a fire at a church in that northwest side neighborhood.

I GOT TO the church, then realized I was in such a domesticated neighborhood that finding a pay telephone was going to be a hassle (these were the days when only technical geeks carried portable phones, and the rest of us laughed at them for hauling around that brick with an antenna).

But an elderly couple who lived across the street literally allowed me into their home (at about 4 a.m.), and gave me unlimited use of the phone to call the office at 35 E. Wacker Dr. to turn in the details, where a rewrite man then turned it into pedestrian copy that got used by news radio (remember when Chicago had dueling news radio stations?) all through the upcoming day.

It also was in those days that I got my first exposure to political people (I literally remember Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart from the days when he was a low-level assistant state’s attorney at the courthouse in suburban Markham) and the ways in which they attempt to do “the people’s business,” and if they can managed to give themselves a perk or two, what the hay?

But it was also during those years that I saw Illinois’ very own Sen. Paul Simon attempt to run for president (I remember chasing him down a flight of stairs trying to get an answer to a question) and also the rise from obscurity to prominent of Carol Moseley-Braun.

I ALSO CAN say I was on hand the day that Chicago gave a big downtown parade for the military veterans returning home from the first Gulf War, along with the day that protesters attempted to punish the state of Illinois by blocking the stairwells and entrances to the Thompson Center state government building, which resulted in government workers having to use fire exits in order to maneuver around the building.

These are just a few of the “war stories” I have in my mind from my City News days, which I may wind up sharing Saturday when I show up for what will be an informal reunion, of sorts, of City News types at the Plymouth Restaurant, 327 S. Plymouth Ct.

It will definitely be more interesting than any high school reunion, particularly my graduating class which was so inept that we did our 20th reunion 21 years after we graduated.

Then again, I’ll be in a room with dozens of other people with their own tales of working the streets of Chicago in search of news.

SO IT MAY be more interesting for me to just sit back and take it all in and hear about the days back when a Radio Shack T-80 model 100 was considered newfangled high-tech and one of the keys to being a good reporter in a competitive situation was to always be aware of where the working payphones were at any given moment.

I must admit that even though I now carry around a cell phone, I always try to make sure I know if there’s a pay phone on hand – just in case. It’s an old City News habit that likely will never completely go away.

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Cutesy First Baby stories become ugly

Today is the worst day of the year for a news junkie such as myself because I could have told you months ago what Tuesday’s big local news story will be – a newborn child who came out of the mother’s womb at “one second after midnight” is the first-born baby of the new year.

The First Baby story bugs me every year. It is so artificial that it is the very definition of junk news – trying to attach significance to a meaningless fact.

I understand the story’s point is to allow television stations and newspapers to show pictures of a beaming mother, sighing with relief that the pain of childbirth is over while she is holding her newborn baby boy or girl, who is at that stage in life when – even if kind of ugly – the baby’s still cute.

But in the overall story of life, there’s little difference between the baby born at 11:57 p.m. on Dec. 31 and the one born at 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 1. There’s no Tens of Thousands of Dollars in Cash and Prizes awaiting the parents of the First Baby.

But hospitals take the story so seriously. Each of them wants the free publicity of being able to say their doctors delivered the First Baby.

Think I’m kidding?

I still remember 1989’s First Baby in Chicago story very well. Back then, I was a reporter for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago, and that was the year of my life when I worked extensively on the overnight shift.

So when 1988 became 1989, I was working. Because senior editors all had holidays off, I was actually in charge that night in determining which stories were covered by the wire service.

So in the 20 or so minutes right after midnight, the City News Bureau got several telephone calls from area hospitals. Memory says seven hospitals had their public relations people call us to claim they had babies who were born in the minute or two after midnight.

One hospital official wanted to know how much she would have to adjust the official time to get their newborn baby into the running to be THE STORY as First Born Baby in Chicago for 1989.

In the end, we had two hospitals both claiming to have had babies born within 10 seconds after the stroke of midnight.

I went ahead and made a judgment call. It’s a tie!

That’s how the City News Bureau reported the story. That’s how news radio stations picked up the story in the morning. Later in the day, Chicago’s television stations sent news crews out to talk to both sets of parents, and the newspapers the next morning recognized our self-declared tie as the official result.

What is sad about all of this is that a third hospital called in after the initial outburst of telephone calls, and after we had made the call that the First Baby was a two-way tie. That hospital was claiming to also have had a baby born in the first minute after midnight, and they wanted to be included.

I ultimately took it on myself to say, “No Way!” They were late in notifying us, and who’s to say just when each of these babies was really born. Changing the story at that point just to massage the ego of another hospital seemed absurd.

What is even more absurd than that?

How about arguing with a hospital director at 3 a.m., who started using some pretty vile language to complain about what he perceived as my snub of his hospital’s public image. We quarreled. I refused to make any change. There was no three-way First Baby of Chicago tie in 1989.

Now some might say that I manipulated the story. But for real manipulation of a First Baby story, one has to look at what happened in Peoria, Ill., the following year.

The Journal Star newspaper reported a story of the first baby born in an area hospital, showing a nice, young couple with their child. Later, we learned the actual first child born in Peoria that year came to life in an ambulance en route to a hospital, a couple of hours before the official child. The reason officials ignored that baby is because the 16-year-old mother’s life story was deemed too depressing and irresponsible to put in the newspaper.

So I ruined a three-way tie for First Baby. Elsewhere, a mother was considered “too ghetto” to be in the newspaper with her baby.

I’d like to think my refusal to play along with a hospital administrator’s ego was more responsible than what happened in Peoria, particularly when one considers that, at heart, the First Baby is basically a fake news story.

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