EXTRA: Ricketts family not a united front. Or are they more than we think?

Call it odd, not that the Ricketts family is one of significant wealth that feels compelled to use their financial power to influence our government.

Ricketts family has its hands … 

But that the family most definitely isn’t one that is united behind any given candidate or cause.

THE PATER FAMILIAS of the Ricketts clan is Joe, who made the family fortune by founding TD Ameritrade. His children serve on the board. The one thing that does unite them is that the family is the primary owner of the Chicago Cubs, with son Tom serving as the ball club’s chairman.

In fact, the ball club is a factor in the family’s politics. They want to bolster the area surrounding Wrigley Field to help enhance the team’s profitability, and have felt that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Tom Tunney have been standing in the way.

So it isn’t a surprise that Tom came out with his own endorsement for mayor and offer of some campaign cash ($25,000, for now, for William Daley’s campaign). What should we make of the fact that Tom’s sister (Joe’s daughter) Laura has her own pick?

She’s backing the mayoral bid of Susana Mendoza, while also having made donations to the mayoral aspirations of Mendoza, Toni Precwinkle and Lori Lightfoot. For what it’s worth, Laura Ricketts has a past history of being the family’s Democrat.

… in many different … 

THE IDEA SHE’D be inclined to want to see a woman prevail isn’t surprising. But just how will the two of them co-exist? Or do they just have one of those relationships where politics is off the table for discussion at family gatherings?

Or is Laura used to be the odd-person out amongst the family politically, since she is a supporter of Democrats while the rest of the family has been amongst the financial supporters of President Donald Trump

… and varied political places

With brother Todd, who nearly got a cabinet appointment last year from Trump, serving as Republican National Committee finance chair and being appointed a member of Trump Victory Committee – which is supposed to be the connection between the RNC and the Trump presidential campaign.

So does this make Chicago Cubs baseball the uniting factor between individuals of varying political leanings? Or is it just evidence that White Sox fans are the Chicagoans sane enough in their approach to electoral activity?

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DNAinfo.com ‘death’ in Chgo, NY shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone

As a reporter-type person who has experienced unemployment on several occasions, I sympathize with the DNAInfo.com website in Chicago and the individuals who earlier this week abruptly learned they were out of work.

RICKETTS: Owned Cubs/media pair less than Tribune Co.

Although there’s nothing at all surprising about the fact that the company operating websites in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington – along with Chicago – decided to suddenly ‘pack it in’ after eight years of trying to cover news in those cities.

JOE RICKETTS, THE head of the wealthy family that owns the no-longer-defending World Champion Chicago Cubs and also was a significant financial backer of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential bid (the family nearly got a member appointed to a Cabinet post), let it be known he was giving up because the business end was failing.

The company wasn’t generating enough revenue to cover the expenses of actually having people on the payroll to cover the news – which is an essential expense if one is going to cover the news properly.

Various reports have pointed out the fact that the employees connected to the websites in New York voted last week to organize themselves as a labor union. Some would have us believe that Ricketts’ decision to shut down was purely a response to not wanting to deal with organized labor.

Which may be true. But the idea that management would rather not have their employees sticking together to negotiate benefits for all is nothing new. The idea of an owner hating organized labor shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody!

Two local websites that are now ...

SO I’M NOT about to join the parade of Ricketts bashers, some of whom are even insisting that we boycott Chicago Cubs games in response to his anti-labor actions. I would never expect him to be sympathetic, and I personally certainly don’t need this as a reason to ignore the Cubs – a ballclub I have never much cared for.

What I take personally from the DNAInfo.com closings is evidence of how costly it can be to professionally report the news. And how those people who are eager to see newspapers and their centuries of experience in doing so (the Chicago Sun-Times is a baby, tracing its origins back to the days just before Pearl Harbor) wither away are truly ridiculous in their attitudes.

There are those people deluded enough to believe there is no loss to society from fewer newspapers because the Internet and websites are capable of replacing them.

... a part of Chicago's media history

Yet most websites I have seen that are news-oriented are way too reliant on having newspapers to generate stories and content in general that they can appropriate for their own use.

A SITE LIKE DNAInfo.com, which actually had reporters looking for stories in the neighborhoods of Chicago (some neighborhoods were covered more thoroughly than others) that was generating its own content is running into the same problems as those who historically were disseminating their content on printed pages of pulp.

Which means most of these sites wind up becoming the medium of choice for benefactors with the finances to not care about their financial bottom line.

Even then, there comes a point when many of them have to cut off the funding and shut down. Remember the ProgressIllinois.com website, which had reporter-type people out-and-about covering stories – with the bills being paid by the Service Employees International Union?

Even they had to give in – with the website remaining in place, but un-updated since that final date. AP: Donald Trump Wins Presidential Election (UPDATED) is the final headline, as though determined to perpetually remind us all of the annoyance our society brought upon itself just over a year ago.

Sun-Times still reporting news, despite death predictions.

THERE IS ONE significant difference between the two closings – DNAInfo.com and its sister websites suddenly found all their content erased from the Internet. A letter from Ricketts explaining his decision to suddenly shut down (and make the four months of vacation pay and severance his reporters will receive seem overly generous) is all that remains of the sites.

There is some speculation Ricketts may try to archive some of the content – for those who care to see what once was of this particular attempt at covering the news.

Although as anyone who follows the “news” is fully aware, yesterday’s stories are ancient history. It’s the ongoing developments that provide for an overall report that has relevance to people’s lives.

And without it, we as a society may have to get used to a condition in which our attempts at public “education” may wind up being fulfilled with cutesy pictures of kitty cats, quirky pictures of people doing something stupid, and all the porn, porn, porn we could ever desire.

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Wood’s retirement timing all too perfect – both athletically and politically

If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect the timing of Chicago Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood’s retirement announcement was a political plot.

Because as the Chicago White Sox continue their road trip to the North Side for a weekend three-game series against the Cubs (and taking the Friday game by a 3-2 score), the games on the field aren’t going to be that interesting.

THE WHITE SOX are struggling for a .500 winning percentage, while the Cubs are trying to avoid being historically awful this season. Nothing really to see here this year.

There was always the chance that this weekend’s series would get overshadowed by electoral politics – specifically the fact that the wealthy father of the family that owns the Cubs (and is begging city government to kick in for an extensive structural remodeling of Wrigley Field) was willing to spend his money on insipid campaign strategies meant to remind us that Barack Obama is (horrors!) a black man.

Because that is the only thing that gets accomplished by reminding us of the fact (which everybody who cares already knows) that Obama once was a member of the congregation of Rev. Jeremiah Wright – who in many ways is a typical preacher in the African-American rhetorical tradition.

There are some people who are talking about boycotting the Cubs because of this. Although I suspect many people won’t care, and some of the types of Chicagoans who typically root for the Cubs may well approve of such a political tactic; maybe even because Obama himself publicly roots for the White Sox.

YES, I HAVE known people who call themselves Cubs fans who say one of the reasons they prefer the North Side team is because of their perception (not altogether accurate, but not completely false either) that the Wrigley Field scene is one for white people – compared to Chicago’s “other” ballclub.

But aside from that, there would have been the talk overshadowing the three-game series that would have had many people caring little about the ballgames themselves.

Personally, I’d rather not have to think about that kind of rancid rhetoric. Being able to get away from trash talk is one of the reasons I enjoy going to ballgames.

Being able to focus for a couple of hours on why the shortstop is so inept that he can’t catch a “routine” ground ball helps me to keep my sanity after being exposed to the political world as much as I often am.

ALTHOUGH THIS IS going to become a political issue, since Obama’s former Chief of Staff (a.k.a., Mayor Rahm Emanuel) is now supposedly so peeved that the Ricketts family would get themselves involved in Obama opposition (even though Ricketts daughter, Laura – who is one of the ballclub owners – has contributed her money to Obama in the past).

He supposedly is unwilling to even talk to the family, regardless of the fact that Cubs CEO Tom Ricketts had the Cubs issue a statement in his name saying neither he, nor the ballclub, were a part of any such political strategy, and certainly didn’t approve of it.

Emanuel is the kind of political person who can hold a grudge, particularly since he doesn’t have the intense “feel” for baseball as a spectator sport that many political people claim to have.

And while there might someday be forgiveness to the point that a deal gets done to have the city involved in funding the Wrigley renovation, it would seem it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

WHICH IS A shame because of speculation that state government would somehow have to be involved, and the General Assembly is rapidly coming up on the May 31 date that it is scheduled to adjourn for the summer.

This could wind up being more “dumb luck” for a ballclub that historically is loaded with such gaffes.

Joe Ricketts, the patriarch of the clan, may well have accomplished more than he intended – even though he isn’t directly involved with the ballclub’s management.

Which is why I’m sure there are those who will be eager to shift the attention back to Wood – who let it be known Friday morning that this weekend series against the White Sox will be the end of his career.

HIS “FINAL” STINT on a pitcher’s mound would come at Wrigley Field, and it would be against the White Sox. Which is about as dramatic a finale as he could craft during this season!



The "big names" of the '90s are now all gone from Chicago



I’m sure some people are going to claim this moment will be Chicago sports history in the making – although it really will be nothing more than a struggling pitcher who no longer has his “best stuff” facing a mediocre ballclub for a hitter or two.



It certainly wouldn’t be anything like that date in 1998 when Wood was a rookie pitcher from Irving, Texas (Dallas Cowboys country) who took the mound against the Houston Astros – and only seven hitters that game did not get punched out by strikeout.

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