Speculation stories – Deep thoughts of news, or just whole load of hooey?

At heart, it’s just a speculation story, as in the Chicago Sun-Times thought they could sell newspapers on Thursday with a story about the load of people who could possibly be considered as contenders for the post of Mayor of Chicago.

Will they really ALL run for mayor?

The newspaper went so far as to publish a front page depicting 38 people they’re saying are potential mayors (or “may nots,” to use the Sun-Times’ bad pun).

I’M INCLINED TO think that Rahm Emanuel is telling a tidbit of truth when he said this week the person who will replace him in the mayor’s office is someone who has yet to declare themselves a candidate.

As in the dozen or so people who have publicly stated a desire to run for mayor aren’t really credible candidates. Which means we should probably give more credence to all of the last-minute arrivals to the mayoral competition front – rather than taking seriously anybody who’s been campaigning for months, but has yet to capture the public’s imagination.

Now I’m not bashing the Sun-Times as somehow publishing nonsense information. I’m sure there are some people eager to pick at the newsgathering organization who will toss out the “fake news” label and try to proclaim this the ultimate evidence.

In reality, it is the work of some of the Sun-Times’ more experienced political reporters dredging up the information they do have to try to figure out who might well become the next mayor of Chicago following the February election and potential April run-off.

Who is Trump's anonymous critic?

PERHAPS EVEN GIVE the public a sense of just who these people are and what they might offer to the city of Chicago now that Emanuel has decided that a third four-year term as mayor just isn’t worth the electoral aggravation it would take to achieve.

Particularly since this particular election cycle in 2019 is going to be such a free-for-all – what with no incumbent and a batch of candidates with limited appeal amongst the masses of Chicago’s population.

Personally, I’m inclined to think one-time Chicago schools CEO Paul Vallas is a part of Chicago’s political past, while former Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has the stink of Laquan McDonald’s death on him just as much as those people who are determined to believe that Rahm Emanuel bears all the blame.

Gave competing paper some publicity

It’s only by comparison to those two so-called front-runners amongst the people willing to challenge Emanuel that potential candidates such as Amara Enyia or Ja’Mal Green can think they have much of a chance of succeeding.

OF COURSE, THE concept of speculation stories isn’t unique to this happening.

For another story I stumbled across on Thursday was off the CNN.com website – a piece of copy contemplating the anonymous commentary the New York Times published about high-ranking presidential staffers who supposedly are working to undermine the desires of Donald Trump out of a sense that they’re protecting the nation.

CNN decided to do a story that listed names of people who could potentially be the anonymous commentary’s author – the one who has committed an act of “treason!” (as Trump thinks it) or is the “rat” (as I’m sure a mob boss would term it).

I don’t think CNN has a clue, particularly since their list of potential political blabbermouths includes Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, or first lady Melania.

Is the public more interested in this?

I’D THINK THE chances of either Trump femme turning out to be the fink is about as likely as the Sun-Times being correct when they say one-time presidential advisor (during the Barack Obama administration) Valerie Jarrett or aging Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White (he’s 85) will become the new mayor.

It may be fun to contemplate – at least for politically-geeky types who take seriously the nuances of public policy.

Whereas I suspect many others will consider the big celebrity-style story of Thursday to be more interesting – actor Burt Reynolds died at age 82.

Perhaps they envision Reynolds approaching the pearly gates with the late actor Jackie Gleason’s “Buford T. Justice” character ready to resume their “Smokey and the Bandit” films pursuit?

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Trump one-upped by New Yawk Times

I have no doubt that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is p-o’ed these days at the New York Times.
 

Even the Daily News felt compelled to play the story

Because the New York real estate developer who has made a big production out of refusing to play by the political rule that he willingly disclose his income through public release of his tax returns now has that very information publicly known.

THE TIMES MANAGED to get a copy of the joint return filed by Trump and then-spouse Marla for 1995. The return showed that Trump’s business losses were so extensive that they enabled him to take advantage of tax write-offs so large that he wound up owing the federal government nothing in the way of taxes.

Literally, the Trumps lost some $912 million that one year – which was far more than most of us have managed to earn during the course of our whole lives.

The newspaper also speculates – without knowing for sure if this is true – that Trump may have used similar tax tactics to cancel an equal amount of money off his tax bill in future years.

Donald Trump, the newspaper tells us, may not have paid federal taxes for nearly the past two decades! Wow!!!!!!

ACTUALLY, THIS SHOULD not be at all surprising to anybody in the know. For the very wealthy often get that way by taking advantage of tax laws and exemptions meant to benefit them.

Trump-loving Post thought Mets were more important

Trump himself told ABC News earlier this year, “I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible.” Then elaborated to a question about his actual tax rate, “It’s none of your business.”

Besides, I’m sure that someone who is as much of a control freak as is Trump views this as a matter of having a right to determine who ought to get information about himself.

Even though most people seeking government office go out of their way to make the information public because they think it somehow enhances the image that they’re (sort of) regular people.

AS IN SOMEONE who actually needs the money from their bi-weekly paycheck in order to cover their daily expenses of life.

Sun-Times relegated Trump tax return to lower right corner

But that is not a role that Trump could even pretend to play. Which is why he so adamantly refused to let anything become publicly known, and in fact now is issuing statements implying that the New York Times is trafficking in stolen goods.

Which is how Trump would like to think of his tax return being. I’m sure he’s anxious to have people think in terms of someone prosecuting New York Times editors with criminal charges for actions that made it worth someone’s while to steal the Trump return.

In fact, by the time you read this, the conservative ideologues who back Trump so vehemently because they think Trump is just like themselves will be spewing that rhetoric so intensely you’ll already have a headache.

THE PROBLEM IS that Trump really is nothing like anyone else – and thank goodness for that. It would be excruciatingly nauseating if there were more than one person with the overbearing gaucheness of Donald Trump!

Not that I expect the people backing Trump will see the tax return to suddenly see these figures and experience an epiphany. Those people have made up their minds long ago, plus the fact that they are so hard-core opposed to the notion of Hillary Clinton. Nothing will change their minds!

But for the real masses who might feel a touch of apathy and believe that there’s no real difference between the two, we should keep this in mind. Trump is someone whose significant wealth has come from being able to use the business establishment rules in his favor.

Regardless of what you think of Hillary, anybody who thinks Donald is any different is being foolish. Then again, Trump has been counting on the masses being foolish all these years to make up with our tax payments what he has been able to avoid paying out of his income.

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EXTRA: NY Times says Trib is wrong

The New York Times came up with their own story Thursday about how the Chicago Tribune took its crack at revealing the actual recipe of Kentucky Fried Chicken’s “original recipe” brand.

An actual ad, rather than Page One space

I found it interesting that the nephew of Col. Harlan Sanders, who was the basis for the Tribune’s story, ignored the Times’ own telephone call request for an interview.

HENCE, THE NEWSPAPER that gives us “All the news that’s fit to print” wound up having to rewrite what had already been published by the one-time “World’s Greatest Newspaper.”

A holiday lid from days past

Although while the Tribune had to publish a non-committal response from the YUM! Brands corporate officials who now own the Kentucky Fried Chicken brand, the Times was able to get them to say that the recipe published by the Tribune in Sunday’s newspaper is NOT the one used in franchises around the globe to produce their chicken.

Regardless, I stand by my original viewpoint that all these stories result in a lot of free publicity for the company – more valued than if they had decided to actually spend money for the advertising space.

Fried foods are in the news, apparently

And certainly a lot cheaper for the company! Although still quite a waste of newsprint space for the publications themselves.

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Is Garcia as competitive as ‘out-of-towners’ would have us think he is?

I read the out-of-town press whenever I can, particularly when they take it upon themselves to report on Chicago.


For oftentimes we’re so close to issues that we’re not capable of looking at the BIG picture. We may well have our own biases that we’re writing what we want to believe will happen – and NOT what likely could occur!


BUT A PAIR of stories published the end of last week in the New York Times and Washington Post strike me as being a bit of a stretch – almost as though someone is determined to believe that our upcoming mayoral run-off (22 days away, and counting) is more competitive than it truly is.

The Times would have us believe that Willie Wilson’s endorsement for Jesus Garcia is a major snub to President Barack Obama and the move that puts Chuy ahead of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Even though the most recent polls would indicate that this is the time when Emanuel is actually gaining ground and building up a big lead in support that could make him safe come Election Day on April 7.

While the Post took an angle that told us of how the African-American voter bloc is split because there are just so many black people who don’t want to buy into the idea of a man born in Mexico becoming mayor of Chicago.

IT’S THE OLD ethnic hang-up that some black people have. I’ll be the first to admit it is a real factor, and it doesn’t go one way. There are Latinos who go out of their way to avoid supporting anything that is black.

But reading these stories just gave me the impression of someone a little too far removed from what is happening here to appreciate the certain levels of nonsense that crop up every campaign season.

I’m not saying that the Times and the Post are both pushing fibs on us. I’m just not convinced that everything is as clear-cut as they’d have us think.

Then again, I’m remembering someone I was told once by an editor back when I was in college and was working as an intern for his publication. “Stories are about conflict. Nobody cares if everybody is on the same side of an issue,” he said some three decades ago.

AND IN THE case of the Chicago mayoral campaign, the fact is that our incumbent mayor is a nationally-known political figure. To them, the real story is if Emanuel winds up getting defeated by a political nobody – which is what Garcia is on the national political scene.

So if it means that signs of Garcia support are going to be taken more seriously than perhaps they should, then so be it.

Just as writing stories about ethnic and racial conflict in a political campaign certainly isn’t completely false. It’s not like there should be automatic support amongst different groups; unless you’re one of those types who views the world as “white people” and “other people.”

Then, you want to see a sameness that makes you the problem in our society.

BUT I’M ALSO not convinced that there is a major split amongst African-American voters. If anything, the evidence I have seen would indicate that Emanuel is actually taking a sizable share of the black vote.

Back on the Feb. 24 municipal elections, Emanuel won more votes in the African-American majority wards of Chicago than any other candidate. Wilson, for all the talk that he was the guy who deprived Rahm of a run-off election-less win, didn’t really take that much support during his campaign.

Which makes me wonder how much can he really offer to Garcia’s continued mayoral challenge? Even if the Times story had a cute anecdotal lead about how Obama himself urged Wilson to support “my boy Rahm,” only to have Willie say he’s supporting “my boy Chuy.”

These stories, and perhaps many others written by those not based in Chicago, may well be over-emphasizing the conflict that could seem a bit ridiculous if, come April 7, a large sense of political apathy (which I sense is the real trend spreading through the Second City) winds up creating a not-so-close victory for Emanuel.

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Polling the polls for November 4; who’s to say if any of them are correct

The Chicago Tribune, that one-time voice of Midwestern Republicanism, is giving Democrats reason to be downright giddy.

 

The newspaper commissioned a poll for the U.S. Senate race and found incumbent Richard Durbin with a 23-percent lead over challenger James Oberweis, the perpetual candidate who should have been content to remain a state senator rather than try to move up so quickly.

 

THEY ALSO DID a poll of the governor’s race and found Gov. Pat Quinn with an 11-point lead over Republican challenger Bruce Rauner.

 

Which sounds downright incredible considering that just about every other poll taken by some group or other has found Rauner in the lead – albeit a lead that seems to be shrinking with time to the point where everyone else thinks this political fight amounts to a statistical tie at this point in time.

 

I may have Democratic Party leanings. But I’m not foolish enough to think that something has suddenly shifted in our society to create these big leads. Meaning I’m skeptical of these polling results.

 

Particularly since it was just a few days ago that the New York Times and CBS News commissioned a poll that had Rauner with a 4 percent lead over Quinn. They also had Durbin with an 11 point lead over Oberweis.

 

BUT LAST WEEK, the Chicago Sun-Times came up with a poll result showing Durbin with merely a 7 percent lead over Oberweis, and evidence that Oberweis was managing to close the gap that exists between him and the incumbent senator from Springfield.

 

A gap that the Tribune would have us think is actually growing, based on their poll results.

 

All along, I have been confused about this particular election cycle. Not that there are people desperate to dump Pat Quinn. That was predictable. There are those who wanted nothing to do with him in the 2010 election cycle, and I’m sure their hostility has only grown.

 

But I’m not about to predict how this election cycle will turn out; although I will admit to telling someone last week who asked me my thoughts that I would not be surprised if Quinn managed to pull out a victory come the evening of Nov. 4.

 

HE COULD EASILY wind up giving yet another victory speech in a record-setting close election.

 

It is why I’m trying not to take any group’s polling results all too seriously.

 

For one thing, some of the results come across as so biased – someone is trying to concoct results meant to make their specific interest look good (or at least not totally pathetic).

 

For another, it’s just way too early. It’s more than a month until the point where people can start showing up at early voting centers to cast ballots (I’m likely to be one of them, so that I don’t have to take time out from working on Election Day).

 

AND IT’S SEVEN weeks until the aforementioned Election Day when we can actually show up at the polls (I’ll admit the experience of voting loses something when one doesn’t take time out on that day to cast a ballot).

 

The reality is that this election cycle in Illinois is going to be decided by those people who do not know right now who they support. Some of them may well not make up their minds until they walk into the voting booth (and some of them may kick themselves as they walk out for the “stupid” choice they just made).

 

That is why the polls are all over the place these days.

 

Illinois’ political leanings for the near future will be decided by those indecisive and wishy-washy enough not to be able to make up their minds right now. What a pleasant thought!

 

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What will become of News Coop?

I must confess to being one of those people who was making a point of buying a copy of the New York Times on Fridays and Sundays – even if most of the rest of the week the paper was not a “must have” purchase for me.

For those are the two days that the Chicago News Cooperative was publishing two pages worth of content in the editions of the Times that were printed in Chicago.

WHILE I REALIZE that the News Coop has its reporters and free-lance writers out and about every day to come up with copy that fills their web site, there was something about being able to see the printed word that made those two days a little different.

So learning Friday night that the fate of the News Coop is uncertain, it made me wonder what hope there is to assuage those individuals whose judgment of the news business is based purely on a financial “bottom line.”

According to the various reports (although it seems the Chicago Reader gets credit for having this story first), the News Coop will cease to exist in its current form at the end of this week.

Which probably means that the New York Times editions printed this coming Friday and Sunday will be the last to have two full pages of local news content.

THERE IS SOME speculation (reported on by Crain’s Chicago Business) that the Chicago Sun-Times will take on the News Coop, although nothing is definite on that front.

Which makes it likely that this effort to create an Internet-based site that generates quality reporting (some of their stuff, including James Warren’s commentaries, was quite interesting) will continue to exist in a scaled-back form – if at all.

From what I have read, it seems that the New York Times was not willing to consider paying more money for the project, since it did not significantly bolster the circulation levels they achieve in the Chicago area.

Soon to move from the New York Times to the Sun-Times? Or nowhere at all!

Although I can’t help but think that such an attitude misses the point. Maybe they weren’t selling more newspapers because of those four pages per week (actually, three, since a half-page on each day was devoted to local advertising).

BUT I’M GOING to wonder how much lower their Chicago circulation would have been had they not been involved with this News Coop project.

Which is to say that I think many business entities that are trying to make money off of the reporting of news had better come around to realize that there are certain levels of content that are going to have to be maintained if they are to remain viable.

Acting as though there can be continual cuts in quality without hurting the financial bottom line is short-sighted. If anything, people are going to reward those entities that bolster their coverage with their readership (whether it be of the actual printed newspaper or of the Internet sites that use their content).

Of course, it also amuses me to think that the Sun-Times may seriously be considering an effort to use News Coop content in their newspaper. Because I believe their motivation would be to have the News Coop reporters and freelance writers do the actual work of news coverage.

WOULD THAT MEAN further cutbacks of the actual Sun-Times staff – which has become so blended with the remaining staffs of the daily newspapers the company owns throughout the suburbs that I have a hard time telling these days who writes for what newspaper!

Could we get the day that the Chicago Sun-Times would be a few dozen pages filled with stories from a scaled-back Chicago News Cooperative, along with the reports put together by the Better Government Association and the assorted wire services?

That makes it seem like we have a big-city paper trying to behave like one of the daily papers published in many rural communities – where on any given day there might be one locally-produced story published alongside the wire copy that fills the space surrounding the display ads.

Which is why I think it a joke whenever these small-town publishers claim they are somehow more responsive to the needs of their communities. In reality, they are simply putting together cheap products – and feeding off the fact that they have no competition that would reveal just how cheap they are to read.

SO I’M GOING to be watching over the course of the next few weeks to see how this particular situation shakes down, and it is something many of you should pay attention to as well – although I suspect most of you won’t give this a second thought until it is too late.

For the fact is that while many people think the Internet with various websites has already replaced the companies that were publishing the news on paper to be read without having to use a computer screen or any other kind of electronic device, they haven’t.

Too much of the content I read there is merely repeated from the places with actual reporters. The very business models of these entities is based on the idea of not having to pay for content creation (a.k.a., reporting the news).

What happens when the day comes that there’s nobody left with reporters for these sites to pick stories up from?

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My unsuccessful sojourn through Chicago and surrounding suburbs for newspapers

Some of you are going to snicker while reading this commentary, but I had a terrible time Wednesday trying to perform the simple act of purchasing a newspaper.

What happened is that my offbeat personal schedule conflicted with the real-world demand for newspapers so that people could have a physical souvenir of Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election.

THINK ABOUT HOW many of those newspapers are going to get tucked away in a drawer somewhere, out of a belief that they will appreciate in value as a remembrance of the night when this country picked its first president who racially was not claiming to be pure Anglo.

Because of Obama’s Chicago ties and the fact that the city plays such a large part of the character of that campaign, the Chicago-area newspapers are going to be in particular demand (does anyone really care how the Alton Telegraph plays the story?)

So there were the accounts of people snatching up stacks of papers Wednesday morning, and the two major metro newspapers in this city increasing their press run to handle the newsstand sales that were expected.

Although apparently, the Obama/McCain presidential campaign that resulted in possibly the highest voter turnout percentage ever also resulted in significantly higher newspaper sales on Wednesday. Most places were “sold out” by about 8 a.m., while I was looking for a paper at about 11 a.m. (which usually isn’t a problem).

THE END RESULT of those sales is that I didn’t get a paper. Not a Tribune. Not a Sun-Times. Not a New York Times (which is what I really wanted). Not a Times of Northwest Indiana (a newspaper I do some writing for).

Nor could I find newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal or the Chicago Defender. Heck, I couldn’t even find a SouthtownStar newspaper, which I don’t buy regularly but will read in a pinch.

My Wednesday newspaper sojourn took about an hour. It meant encountering about a dozen news boxes, two supermarkets, three convenience stores and four gas stations/convenience stores – along with five different Starbucks coffeehouses.

During my drive, I flipped around the radio, stumbling across WGN-AM’s report that the Chicago Tribune completely sold out its press run on Wednesday, and was going to publish an extra 220,000 copies for sale at 7-Eleven convenience stores.

NOT THAT I could find any of those 7-Eleven stores that got extra copies. In fact, I couldn’t find any stores or news boxes that had any newspapers at all.

Nothing.

All of them were cleaned out of newsprint. I mean that literally.

Most of the places I went to had completely empty racks. Two places literally put up signs on their doors saying they were “out of newspapers.” Others had salesclerks tell me the instant I walked in, “no more papers.”

IN FACT, THE only newsprint I could find was two convenience stores that had copies of the weekly tabloid about sports published by USA Today, and one convenience store that had copies of the “Racing Form.”

Now if I were interested placing a bet on the ponies, it would have helped. But in terms of trying to find a perspective on the world on this particular day – forget it.

Admittedly, I was able to go to the websites of all the newspapers I would have liked to consider getting a copy of. So I have a sense of just what copy was published in those newspapers.

But it just isn’t the same. Websites are nice when one is looking for a specific story (which means one knows already what’s in the paper) and can search for it quickly. But when trying to get a feel for the larger picture (along with read longer pieces of copy that would take up way too many screens on a computer), the Internet becomes an inferior medium.

ONE LEARNS TO appreciate the advantages of the print medium.

In fact, for all that people want to say that newspapers are “dead,” it always struck me that the people who were most pushing that concept were the ones with an interest in the Internet. Their self-interest is served by thinking that printed publications are no longer desired by the public.

To what degree are Wednesday’s heavy sales an example that there still is a place for the written word published on newsprint? Is there still a place for the seriousness of the physical product when it comes to trying to comprehend major news events?

Is this the ultimate evidence that the future for newspapers is to make themselves more somber and literate – with less of the fluff that fills out way too many news-oriented television broadcasts?

OR IS IT just that the physical heft of a newspaper makes a great souvenir – more impressive than anything that could be published on the Internet.

I’ll be the first to admit that I would have liked to have the Times (the New York version, that is) to hold and puruse in future years as a way of remembering the completeness of the human experience on this day when Obama learned he is now going to get the regular national security briefings to prepare himself for Inauguration Day on Jan. 9.

I can understand that other people would feel the same way. After all, no matter how incredibly literate (at least in my own mind) my late-night “EXTRA!” analysis of Obama’s victory was, I doubt anyone seriously read the commentary and hit the “print” button on their computers.

It just doesn’t make as impressive a souvenir.

ONE OTHER POINT I must make. As much as I would have liked to buy a newspaper, I’m not interested in buying someone else’s used copy. Nor am I planning to scour eBay in search of one.

I did make a quick check late Wednesday, and found that someone already has put his copy of today’s Charlotte (N.C.) Observer up for bid – with a minimum bid of $100. It ain’t worth it.

The key to one of these newspapers developing true value is the passage of time, and the destruction of most of those copies. The fact that so many copies were sold means there are many, many newspapers from this day in circulation, which reduces their potential value to a collector-type.

Which means that the way it goes up in value is for your copy to be destroyed, so that 60 years or so from now, someone else’s surviving copy becomes valuable.

ABOUT THE ONLY way somebody’s newspaper will be worth something is if the particular copy has some special story, such as if someone could get the copy of the Arizona Republic delivered Wednesday morning to John McCain’s home.

One could claim that the wet spots in the newsprint were McCain’s tears after “reading all about it” that he lost.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Chicago newspaper publishers underestimated the number of copies of their publications (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=31701) they could sell on Wednesday. Apparently, I was not alone in experiencing difficulty in finding (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003887492) a newspaper on Wednesday. But I’m not desperate enough to buy this (http://tinyurl.com/55b4mk/) or anybody else’s newspaper that gets put up for sale on eBay.