Who’s to say what becomes of Chicago's one-time 'Bright One'?

Wednesday was supposed to be the day that the corporate entity that owns the Chicago Tribune would be able to finalize a deal to purchase its long-time competitor; the Chicago Sun-Times.

Who knows how long there will be two?

It would have seen the city’s two ayem newspapers combine into one corporate entity, even though there were promises that two separate publications would be maintained at least for the short-term.

BUT THE POINT of not permitting the deal to be immediately approved when it was announced two weeks ago was to allow for any potential buyers to come forth who could keep the one-time “Bright One” as a truly separate and independent entity.

Not that anybody expected to. It seems the tronc, Inc. types who now run the Tribune (coincidentally, the same people who used to operate the Sun-Times) were confident no one would come forth.

As it was, Crain’s Chicago Business came out with a report indicating that owners of the Arlington Heights-based Daily Herald considered a Sun-Times purchase, but backed off. Along with the company that owns suburban daily newspapers in Crystal Lake, Geneva and Joliet, and Gannett – the founder of USA Today and operator of many other daily papers across the country (including in Des Moines, Iowa, Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville, Ky., and Milwaukee – to name a few).

So who’s going to be crazy enough to want to operate a newspaper whose best days appear to be in the past, and has the drawback of being a Number Two paper in a two-paper town? Most people intrigued enough to buy a newspaper (because they think its newsgathering assets can somehow be used to serve other purposes) would want the Number One paper – or preferably a monopoly operation. Anybody who expects Amazon.com (which owns the Washington Post) to swoop into Chicago for the Sun-Times is being delusional.

BUT NOW, VARIOUS reports are cropping up saying there may be a buyer after all. Although we’re not being told who it could be.

Officials with the Chicago Newspaper Guild are saying they are aware of two entities that are expressing interest in taking over the Chicago Sun-Times. While it seems the Sun-Times chapter of the guild that represents news reporters is making statements saying it would like to see more time beyond Wednesday’s deadline to consider the newspaper’s future.

It’s hard to say whether there’s really someone with interest capable of running a newspaper that would be worth a damn. Or if this is just wishful thinking from people who see the idea of being the junior partner in a two-paper combo as being about as dreadful an outcome that could possibly occur.

It could turn out that we’ll learn by week’s end that there is NO ONE else out there willing to plunk down some token fee to buy the publication.

WHOSE TOTAL PRICE paid may wind up becoming an embarrassment for the Sun-Times; because it could be such a low figure that it would be interpreted as evidence of just how far the ship has sunk!

Of course, I can’t help but remember my former employer, United Press International, which in 1992 was sold for $3.95 million to Middle East Broadcasting Centre. Eight years later, they sold it for nearly $40 million to News World Communications – which operates it these days as an affiliate of the Washington Times and its other right-leaning publications around the globe.

It may be possible that someone could come in, take the carcass of the Sun-Times and figure out a way to dredge some bucks out of its remains. Similar to what billionaire investor Sam Zell intended to do when he bought the Chicago Tribune nearly a decade ago.

Although it’s possible that any new purchaser of the Sun-Times would wind up resembling Zell more than the Saudi royal family that had UPI for a few years a couple of decades ago.

MY POINT IS to say I’m not sure how all of this is going to turn out.

Except for the fact that it’s always a loss whenever a newsgathering organization of any type is diminished. Even for those people who want to believe that the Internet now contains a slew of places where one can find much more information than you ever could in an ink-on-paper medium.

For the reality is there are so many places that rely on the existence of newspapers and their assets to generate the content they publish. Even with the Sun-Times, which remains an entity capable of covering a news story and picking up pieces that otherwise would be missed.

One less newspaper means less content; and the eventual outcome of websites whose business models are predicated on the concept of being able to aggregate copy from elsewhere winding up with nothing but blank space to try to fill our minds.

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And then, there was one?

I remember as a kid my father used to send me to a local store every Sunday to pick up a newspaper. The Chicago Tribune, always the Tribune.

Unofficial newspaper war grave marker?

I can recall him complaining about other newspapers, and once I remember hearing him muttering "I hate that paper" when a television commercial touting the Chicago Sun-Times came on the air.

YET I ALSO can recall whenever we’d visit my maternal grandparents, I’d get to see copies of the Sun-Times. My grandfather subscribed; my mother throughout her life would pick up and read a copy (until the end when her eyesight became weakened to where she couldn’t read much) whenever she’d get a chance.

When she finally passed on a few years ago, it only seemed appropriate that my brother, Christopher and I, paid to put her death notice in the Sun-Times (which ticked off the editors of the newspaper I was writing for at the time – they would have preferred I paid them to publish the notice).

Now I’m sure none of this is particularly unique. Many of us can tell tales about why we chose whichever news sources we prefer for information about the screwy world in which we live.

But those sources are withering away, one by one, to the point where we may soon be down to the survivor. It seems the Chicago Tribune really will be able to declare itself “the winner!!!” of the Great Chicago Newspaper War. The Last News Rag Standing, so to speak.

NOW I KNOW the Chicago Tribune is claiming that the bid its corporate types is putting in to buy the Chicago Sun-Times is not going to result in the immediate cessation of publishing of the Sun-Times. I read that same Chicago Tribune editorial in which they said they envision publishing two separate newspapers.

They “savor the importance of preserving what metropolitan Chicago now enjoys; thriving competition between two large news organizations that know they serve readers best by trying to outdo each other.” Or so sayeth the Tribune.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of the editorial writer who came up with that line, and the others in the editorial that says there will remain two publications with “independent” editorial voices. It is the wish of many a news consumer, except perhaps for some snotty kid-types who think everything rotates around the Internet and that “news” is the boring content – compared to porn and YouTube videos of kids getting into fights and cutesy kitty cats for the more sensitive amongst us.

Sun-Times tries to explain move to its readership

But I’m skeptical. I can’t help but envision the corporate types who, soon enough, will decide that there are economical efficiencies to combining editorial resources into one “super paper” of sorts – perhaps one whose content can then bolster the on-line products they think will sell better to a younger generation.

IT COULD BE one year, or five or so down the line before Chicago becomes a one-newspaper town – perhaps with a few pages set aside for local news called the “Sun-Times section” of the newspaper to pay homage to the tabloid that for most of its life took pride in being the publication of choice for city-based readers.

It wouldn’t even be a new story for Chicago. Let’s not forget that both the Tribune and Sun-Times once had sister newspapers – in the form of Chicago Today and the Chicago Daily News.

Particularly at the Sun-Times/Daily News combination there was the sense of two newspapers that tried to keep unique identities on everything – until the business-types figured they could be more profitable as one larger Sun-Times rather than two separate publications.

It will be interesting to see how the next few weeks play out – since corporate types have hinted they’d like to have this deal complete by June 1, and are merely waiting for federal regulators to indicate that a Chicago newspaper combo wouldn’t violate anti-trust laws.

IS ANYBODY CRAZY enough to put in a competing bid. Would the federal government in this Age of Trump decide to meddle just to show us all who “the boss” truly is!

And what would a Tribune-owned Sun-Times look like? As things stand, the Sun-Times has for several years been printed at the Tribune-owned plant, and I argue the paper hasn’t really “looked right” (the pages seem “too small”) ever since the Sun-Times gave up control of their physical product.

Will future generations wonder why city newsboxes needed more than one slot?

It leaves a lot of questions and uncertainty, that some people I’m sure won’t concern themselves with. It does make me think of a plaque erected along Michigan Avenue south of Madison Street that pays homage to the various newspapers and wire services (including my one-time employer United Press International) that have existed in Chicago.

Is that destined to be the grave marker for the Chicago newspaper casualties that have rung up throughout the years; completely ignored by the many passersby who walk along Michigan Avenue daily without giving it a moment’s notice.

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Same stuff; different label? Or are we destined to shop at Piggly Wiggly?

I find it amusing the degree to which corporate interests own varieties of a product that might have the public think their competing with themselves. 

Is the high-end image of Whole Foods ...

One such example was when the Chicago White Sox last month announced they were going to have an official import beer to be served at the ballpark – that being Modelo Especial.

THERE ARE THOSE people who think that Mexican brand is some sort of exotic, high-end label. Particularly when they start playing with the lime and salt.

Although it turns out the corporate interest that owns the company that produces Modelo also is the one that several years ago bought out Anheuser-Busch. As in Budweiser.

Which may be why Modelo is one brand of Mexican beer I don’t consume. Actually, I just think the taste is unexceptional. Not even particularly lousy. Just kind of pointless. Much like I’d describe Budweiser beer products.

But the money that gets spent on both winds up in the same corporate wallet. I find that to be funny, particularly if there’s someone out there who thinks that drinking Modelo-brand cerveza somehow makes them a more discriminate consumer than someone who quenches their thirst with Bud Light.

THIS SAME REACTION is what I’m feeling Monday upon reading the reports about Whole Foods quite possibly being for sale, and one potential buyer being Albertson’s.

The Boise, Idaho-based company owns supermarkets all over the country, and they operate them under various brand names meant to create the impression of locally-based companies.

In the Chicago-area, Albertson’s is the corporate entity that gives us Jewel and Osco.

,,, destined to become a part of 'da Jewels?'

As in “We’re goin’ to da Jewel’s,” that would like for us all to think of itself as the quintessential Chicago food shopping experience – particularly now that Dominick’s is ancient history.

ALTHOUGH I SUSPECT most of us merely rant and rage about our neighborhood Jewel’s store being dirty or depressing or poorly stocked or whatever complaint we feel like making. I shop there because it’s close by; I literally used to live one block from one of their stores.

To people, it won’t matter what the quality is; we’ll want to believe there has to be something better somewhere else. In fact, I think that’s a large part of why Whole Foods (and Trader Joe’s, as well) achieve some success in the Chicago area.

You go in there and see allegedly high-end foodstuffs – even though many of them are merely more expensive versions of what it is you can buy at “da Jewels.”

Will 'Krogering' become a national concept?

Now, it seems Albertson’s is considering placing a bid to buy out Whole Foods. Whole Foods and Jewel could become sister stores. For all those people who are willing to indulge themselves (and clean out their wallets) by spending more for organic produce and other pseudo-sophisticated products, I can’t help but wonder how they’ll react to having to consider themselves as shopping at a Jewel partnership.

BECAUSE I CERTAINLY doubt that this means Jewel would go “high-end.” Although I have noticed some Jewel stores in select communities have gone out of their way to remodel themselves and create the impression that they’re carrying fancier food products so as to compete with the high-end supermarkets such as Whole Foods.

Personally, I wonder what happens if the day comes when all supermarkets wind up finding themselves under one entity and we get generic grocery stories from which to buy our edible products.

 

Will we all someday experience Piggly Wiggly sensation?

We’ll all wind up eating the same thing – and probably wind up paying more for it. Maybe it would even turn out that we’d take interest in which conglomerate winds up winning out as the dominant supermarket. Are we all destined to “go Krogering” for our food – regardless of where we live?

If that’s the case, I vote for the Piggly-Wiggly to prevail. I think it would serve the culinary snobs right to have to shop in one of their stores.

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General Assembly would have been better off doing nothin’ for Comptroller

I prefer when the law gets written in a neutral way, and the political partisanship factors could go either way – they’re unpredictable.

Which is why I wasn’t enthused with the General Assembly’s actions on Thursday by which Illinois will have a special election to pick a new state comptroller come 2016, even though the current term of office is to run through January 2019.

FOR THE RECORD, both the state Senate and Illinois House of Representatives voted Thursday in a special session (whose legitimacy is questioned by those who believed the current Legislature adjourned for good back in November) to pass a bill that creates a special election to fill constitutional offices if more than two years of a four-year term remain.

Gov. Pat Quinn still has to sign the measure into law. But he said Thursday he’d go along with it. This bill likely will be his last act as governor before Bruce Rauner assumes the position come Monday at noon.

All of this came about because of the death nearly one month ago of Judy Baar Topinka – who was elected back in November to another term as Illinois comptroller. That term would have begun Monday and would run through January 2019.

Without this change in law, there were no provisions for special elections. So Topinka would have been replaced by a gubernatorial appointment. Someone literally would get a full four-year appointment without being elected first.

SOME PEOPLE ARE claiming to have serious objections to such a concept. I don’t so much, largely because I accept the fact that we give governors significant authority to make appointments and fill vacancies.

People who have a problem with Republican Rauner having that kind of power (and I’ll be the first to admit I’m not enthused about the idea) perhaps should have thought more thoroughly about who they voted for last year.

I accept that the power to pick a replacement for Topinka will fall to Rauner, just as it would have fallen to Quinn had he been able to win re-election.

Somehow, the Legislature’s actions on Thursday do come across as changes in law motivated purely by political partisanship – particularly since the circumstances the state faces in replacing Topinka are ever so unique.

WE MADE LONG-RANGE changes in state law to fit these particular circumstances. That just seems wrong! And short-sighted.

Unless people think a future Legislature will make further changes to fit whatever future circumstances might happen to occur. If that is true, that is just scary!

Although to hear Republican partisans rant and rage about the Democratic-controlled Legislature’s actions on Thursday came across as ever so self-righteous because they were pushing for a concept that I find equally appalling – the idea of merging the treasurer and comptroller’s offices into one post.

The “Comptroller of the Treasury” is one overly-pompous title I have heard used for the merger. Considering that these are offices to which Democratic candidates often get elected, it seems the GOP merely wants to reduce the opposition party.

I STILL BELIEVE the financial safeguards that caused these duties to be split between two separate constitutional offices are necessary. I believe we can’t be too cautious.

I also wonder if political officials would come to see one combined office as a political plum that would give their party significant benefits – along with leaving the opposition party with nothing at all! Never underestimate the potential for greed amongst government officials.

The idea of merging the two offices was ignored on Thursday, which was good. Although I’ll be the first to admit it was most likely motivated by a desire by Democrats to stick it to Rauner – whose campaign rhetoric of “shaking things up” all too often comes across as wanting to reward his own interests at the expense of others.

There was no “good guy” on Thursday at the Illinois Statehouse, just some evidence that the next four years are going to be a particularly ugly partisan spat in Springfield.

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And da winnah is, Da Sun-Times?!??

I can remember being a brand new reporter-type person back in the late 1980s and talking with some of the long-time (and now retired, and in some cases, deceased) veteran reporters of the Chicago Sun-Times when they would speculate on their publication’s fate.

Whose news box will prevail?

They seemed to think back then that the Sun-Times would be a product of the 20^th Century that would no longer exist once we passed over into the new millennium.

YET NOW WE’RE one-eighth of the way into the 21^st Century. All that transition into a new millennium talk seems like a life-time ago. And yet, we still have the Sun-Times with us – albeit in printed editions that now only get as fat as the paper used to be scrawny in the old days.

And I wonder how those old Sun-Times vets would react to not only seeing the newspaper still alive, but to the Crain’s Chicago Business report on Friday that indicated the Sun-Times ownership was talking about purchasing “assets” belonging to the Chicago Tribune.

Of course, Crains’ report was purposely vague as to what was meant by “assets.” That could mean anything from some websites that deal primarily in advertising to some of the newspaper or broadcast properties that Tribune officials are expected to try to sell off later this year as part of their way of becoming a financially-solid company.

Could we really get the day when WGN (either television or radio) is a sister property of the Chicago Sun-Times? Would they take on the monicker of the World’s Greatest Newspaper that those broadcast call letters perpetuate?

OR WOULD WE really get an effort by the Sun-Times to purchase the Chicago Tribune itself?

Sister newspapers published in coordination with each other? Or just buying the Tribune so as to fold it and eliminate the competition?

 

Whodathunk a quarter of a century ago that the great winner and new heavyweight champion (or are modern newspapers bantamweight instead?) of the Chicago newspaper wars would be the Sun-Times? It’s a thought that leaves me staggering with a headache.

Talk about an unpredicted outcome!

NOW LIKE I stated before, the report in Crain’s was purposely vague because Sun-Times officials are being vague. In fact, it may well be possible that this is just cheap trash talk by Sun-Times executives who want to make the Tribune types wet their pants a bit at the very thought of becoming merely a part of Wrapports – the Chicago-based company that now owns the Sun-Times and always engages in high-minded talk about how they’re going to turn the newspaper reporting assets to bolster a digitally-based media company.

This may be the ultimate evidence of talk being cheap.

Although it also has me wondering what will become of the high and mighty Tribune – whose cornerstone of the gothic tower along Michigan Avenue reminds us that it has been in place since 1847 and probably thinks it will outlive the city of Chicago itself!

Sold to the Sun-Times? Or is there anything to all that rumor-mill rumblings that Rupert Murdoch might actually consider purchasing the newspaper.

HE IS THE man who already owns the Wall Street Journal (along with his New York Post) and who allegedly believes that having the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune all aligned together would give him the basis of a truly national news brand in this country.

Which was the reason that the Tribune types themselves bought the old Times-Mirror Co. a decade ago – thinking that having the Times and Newsday in New York’s suburbs would give them a combo in the top three U.S. media markets.

Would that be enough to get a whole slew of Tribune types to jump ship and try to hook on at the Sun-Times – to avoid having to work for a Murdoch-owned publication? Or have times changed enough that no one would care that the Tribune would shift from being the sister newspaper of WGN-TV to being the sister publication of WFLD-TV (which originally was created to be the television counterpart of the Sun-Times).

I don’t know what the outcome of all this is going to be. Although it won’t surprise me if whoever does wind up taking on the Chicago Tribune will have some vision similar to the Sun-Times types – taking all those reporting assets and archives and trying to put them to use on the Internet.

THERE IS VALUE in all that information – no matter how many advertising-oriented dinks want to view the news “content” of a newspaper as space-filler in between the girdle ads.

About the only thing I am sure of these days is whatever the outcome of the Tribune (and Sun-Times) ownership situation turns out to be, it will be some status that – back when I was a beginning reporter-type for the now-defunct (and sorely missed) City News Bureau of Chicago – none of us could have dreamed of a quarter-of-a-century ago.

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Do we need so many police chiefs?

There’s a bill pending these days before the Illinois House of Representatives; one that would make it easier for police departments in individual municipalities to be done away with and combined into larger law enforcement entities.

I heard about this particular bill earlier this week from a state legislator who absolutely detests the idea. He denounces it as a “bad bill” and makes it clear that he’s going to do whatever it takes to kill this concept off.

PERSONALLY, I THINK his effort will succeed – although not because of this individual legislator (who is way too low-ranking to have any such influence, which is why I’m not going to name him). It’s just that I can see his attitude when it comes to local police to be very pervasive among political people.

There’s no way they’re going to give up their local police departments – which make them feel like they are people of importance. After all, they have their own departments and their own chiefs who have to answer directly to them.

If their respective home communities got merged into some larger-scale law enforcement agency, it might very well show how insignificant some of these towns and villages truly are.

So for the time being, we likely can count on each and every ‘burg having its own police chief and its own law enforcement officers – anxiously patrolling their local streets to keep them safe from crime that they likely think spills over from surrounding communities.

AFTER ALL, ___________________ is far too fine a community to have criminals of its own, the local officials (fill in the blank yourself) will proclaim.

Nonsense!

Because I have to admit that when I heard this particular legislator (who comes from Cook County) start attacking this particular bill, I couldn’t help but get motivated to think what a wonderful idea it truly is.

Perhaps it is because I come from Cook County, where our 129 municipalities run the gamut from Chicago’s 2.7-something million people to the communities that barely have 1,000 people.

HAVE YOU EVER been to Hometown, Ill.?

Not that this is a bash on Hometown, a southwestern suburb so tied into Oak Lawn that I’m sure many people passing through don’t even realize they are separate municipalities.

I also have seen many smaller suburbs where the local police department is a chief, a second-in-command (who usually carries the rank of Lieutenant) and a full-time patrol officer or two – backed up with many part-time cops who do their patrols to bring in extra money to bolster their “real” job.

I wonder what is truly accomplished – other than the fact that the mayor (usually a ‘village president’ in reality) of that town gets to say he has his own department.

PERHAPS WE’RE AT the point where we ought to merge all these local departments into one law enforcement agency. In fact, there are times when I think that the Cook County sheriff’s police ought to be patrolling all of the county – and not just the little patches of unincorporated area that exist.

Of course, that would require a significant upgrade in the budget the county sheriff gets. I’m sure Tom Dart wouldn’t be able to undertake such an effort on his current budget – although he’s already being asked to patrol the streets of suburban Ford Heights without any increase in funding.

Although considering that many suburban municipalities are having their own budget crunches these days and that the cash-consuming part of their budgets is their public safety agencies (police and fire departments), maybe it would cost the towns less money if a larger-scale entity were to do the patrols.

They likely could do it at a slightly lesser cost than it now takes to maintain individual police agencies in all those suburban towns.

PERHAPS IT SHOULD be only the largest of suburban towns (and the city of Chicago itself) that have their own police departments?

Then again, perhaps even that is a mistake. Take Miami and Dade County, Fla., where it literally is the equivalent of a county police that patrols the entire area. Maybe that’s something that city is doing right.

Besides, I have often heard those suburban officials complain about how they are susceptible to gang-related crime because those gang members know how to jump across suburban boundaries at-will – using jurisdictional issues to evade arrest for their actions.

Making an all-mighty Cook County police (or Chicago-area police, if you will) could help get around that, while also potentially making police structure more efficient.

THE ONLY ONE who really suffers is the politician – whose electoral ego will take a body check.

Then again, that probably is sufficient reason in the “real world” for legislators to vote against this (they don’t want to tick off the local political operatives who got them elected to their seats in Springfield in the first place).

So in the name of political expediency, the one who will take a body check this spring will likely be we, the people, when this bill withers away faster than Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s attempts to have the General Assembly impose that registration fee on people who own handguns.

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