Partisan politics run amok at all levels

Trump has one thing in common with Rauner, … 

It may well be my generation’s contribution to the electoral process – we not only tolerate the overly partisan nature that prevents things from occurring, we encourage it.

The notion of people of the opposition political party being demonized because they have the unmitigated gall to think differently. How dare they!?!

PERSONALLY, I ALWAYS have thought the partisan nature of our electoral set-up has the advantage of preventing either “side” from running amok; from being out-of-control.

… feeling the need to demonize an opponent

Literally for letting them behave as though politics is an “all or nothing” game with the loser needing to learn to shut up and take it – as in whatever abuse the political opposition feels like dishing out.

We’re at a point now in this Age of Trump in which our nation’s chief executive is determined to demonize everyone in the majority of society who is embarrassed by his garish behavior.

Take his behavior Thursday, when he responded to the joint effort by dozens of daily newspapers across the country to choose as their editorial subject for the day the notion that the president is literally sitting on his brains every time he goes off on a tangent about news organizations being the “enemy of the people.”

TRUMP USED PHRASES such as “collusion” to take shots at the joint action – which usually is a term that implies some form of criminal conspiracy. As though he thinks federal prosecutors ought to be working on a joint prosecution of all the publishers and editorial writers who did work on putting together a joint statement.

Which basically amounts to saying that the newspapers so often being dumped on by Trump aren’t going to take it being smacked about anymore.

For the governor, it's "Blame Madigan!"

Far from being criminal in intent, it feels more like the schoolyard bully gets his keister kicked in by the very people he has been taunting, then goes about complaining that the people he has been terrorizing have no business thinking about fighting back.

Personally, I’m viewing my own retribution as coming in 2020 – when we as a society have our chance to considering a collective Trump Dump! If we can’t get ourselves organized to pick somebody else (there were 3 million more of us who wanted the concept of “President Hillary,” remember?), then perhaps we deserve what we get.

YET IT’S NOT just at the federal level where such nonsense talk takes place.

Take our very own Illinois, where Gov. Bruce Rauner is trying to turn the political unpopularity he has into some sort of statement about Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago – whose actual “offense” is that he has refused to cooperate with Rauner’s partisan desires to undermine the influence of organized labor within state government.

On Thursday in Springfield as part of the Democrat Day activities at the Illinois State Fair, there was a line of questioning amongst some reporter-types about whether Madigan is a “liability” to Democrats.

The state legislator who is now executive director of the state Democratic Party says this election should not be about “individual personalities.” While Kwame Raoul (the Dem seeking election as Illinois attorney general) merely responded “My name is Kwame Raoul, Next question?”

PERHAPS TRUMP WOULD like the kind of press questioning that presumes his partisan political principles have a basis in truth, just like Rauner got on Thursday. Although I’ve also seen speculation that the “questions” came from political operatives trying to spin the line of rhetoric.

For Trump, it's the content of what is published in all those little boxes

So what should we think? Do we have people openly hostile to the partisan stances of our elected officials?

Or do we have elected officials openly hostile to the concept that not everybody in our society agrees with what they think?

The cliché says that “Everybody has a right to be wrong.” The reality is that a society where everybody agrees would be not only an un-American concept, it would be a downright dull place in which to have to live.

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How much times have changed politically. Bernie proud of protest bust

There would have been a time when a candidate seeking government office would have considered it a political death if word got out that they once took part in a political protest.

And the thought that there were pictures of the candidate in question being cuffed by police officers who are hauling him off to jail? You can forget about that guy ever being able to think of running for office again.

YET TIMES TRULY do change, it seems.

For that is the situation presidential dreamer Bernie Sanders, the senator from  Vermont who has proudly used the socialist label to describe his political leanings, is now in.

Kartemquin Films found it had footage of a protest that took place on Aug. 5, 1963 at 73^rd Street and Lowe Avenue, with one of the protesters bearing a strong resemblance to what we’d think a youthful Sanders would look like.

Also, the Chicago Tribune went digging through their own archives and found that one of their photographers took pictures of that protest. One of which is the “money shot,” so to speak, of a protester in handcuffs being taken away.

THE PROTESTER IN question in that shot? A then-student at the nearby University of Chicago by the name of Bernie Sanders.

I’m sure if Sanders were seeking the Republican nomination for anything, his reaction would be different. For that matter, if any of those knuckleheads seeking the presidency were to have been in a protest way back then, we’d be hearing the apologies now.

Now they were experiencing a moment of youthful ignorance, and how they now know better than to do anything so disrespectful as to express opposition to the establishment.

Which is a sentiment that many of those conservative ideologues really believe, even though such expression of opposition is about as “American” a concept as exists.

BUT BERNIE IS wishing to be the Democratic nominee, and one who sees how his past actions can actually be used to bolster the image he wants to create for himself as he tries to avoid losing the early momentum he gained from victories or near victories in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Because one of the raps against the Vermont politico is that he’s an old white guy who’s really not all that in tune with the interests or concerns of black people.

As it turns out, Sanders was arrested while protesting the “Willis Wagons.” Which to anyone who knows their Chicago history was that 1960s effort by Chicago Public Schools officials to thwart efforts to truly integrate the schools racially.

When the black neighborhood schools became too cramped, rather than move the overflow to schools in white neighborhoods (let’s not forget that many white families were already using the Catholic school system to keep away from people not like themselves), school officials erected mobile homes in the parking lot to use as extra classroom space.

THE THEN-SUPERINTENDENT of the Chicago Public Schools back then was Benjamin Willis – hence the use of the “Willis Wagon” monicker to denounce the practice.

The practice eventually created such a backlash that it drove Willis out-of-town. And when Willis died decades later, his obituaries all led with the fact that he was the namesake of the wagons.

The ones that caused the liberal-minded college student to spend a day in the Englewood neighborhood to protest – and be obnoxious enough that the police felt compelled to take him away.

And now, he wants it to help bolster his “liberal” credentials against Hillary – whose own ‘ancient history’ credentials include once being a youthful member of the Congressional staff that looked into impeachment for then-President Richard M. Nixon concerning Watergate.

SO A LOW-LEVEL Watergate staffer versus someone who ‘went to jail’ (even if it was just a couple of hours in a South Side police district holding cell) to picket something still considered locally repulsive some five decades later?

Who knows? It may actually get Bernie a couple of extra votes in Chicago!

  -30-

How clueless can some people be?

Dan Piraro's 'Bizarro' strips occasionally hit too close to home

Admittedly, I have a bias – I spent my time in college studying history (that is, when I wasn’t writing copy for assorted newspapers) and got my B.A. degree studying the foreign policy of the United States.

But it always manages to amaze me when the historical cluelessness of the masses is exposed.

WE LITERALLY ARE in danger of being sentenced to relive our mistakes because we didn’t study our history. Or so said the Italian philosopher George Santayana.

Take WGN-TV, which earlier this week wrote up some copy for a news anchor to read about the start of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

Rather typical coverage that would fill a few seconds of airtime. The presentation was supposed to be enhanced by an on-screen graphic beside the news anchor’s head depicting the Star of David – the universal symbol of the Jewish religious faith.

Except that someone, in picking through assorted stars of David to find one to use on-air, managed to screw up by picking out an illustration of a yellow piece of felt cut into the shape of the Jewish star, with the German word “Jude” on it.

IN SHORT, THE badge that the Nazi-era German government used to require Jewish people to wear so as to make them stand out in the general public – and therefore more open to harassment from what that government considered to be the “real” people.

What WGN-TV intended

Not exactly the symbol that Jewish people want to be reminded of on one of the holiest of holidays in all of Judaism, although the resulting WGN apology was certainly an act of atonement.

Now I don’t think that WGN-TV is employing anyone with neo-Nazi sympathies or who is interested in pushing the idea of an Aryan master race. No one there is pledging allegiance to Adolf Hitler (or not even propagandist Josef Goebbels).

It’s someone who was vacuous enough to think that anything connected to a six-point star somehow is symbolic of Judaism. By that line of logic, many law enforcement officers are Jewish.

What WGN-TV gave us

ADMITTEDLY, THIS IS a symbol of Jewish harassment. But once again, not the concept that was meant to be pushed. All because someone probably took as few history courses as possible while being educated, and probably thought even those were too many.



Of course, this kind of vacuous thought isn’t a one-time incident.

I still recall a moment from a couple of decades ago when the Northwest Herald newspaper in suburban Crystal Lake ran a story about an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., about the use of the atomic bomb to bring an end to the Second World War.

The first of those bombs was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan by an Army Air Corps bomber called the Enola Gay – named as a tribute to the pilot’s mother.

BUT SOME COPY editor had no clue what Enola Gay was, and the resulting headline referred to the “Enola Homosexual.” Probably based on some higher-up’s editorial decision that gay people aren’t gay, they’re homosexual. Or a whole bunch other pejorative slurs too crass to put in the newspaper.

The reality that somebody forgot

Aside from the fact that it was intended to not put a positive spin on gay people, it bothers me that someone was so unaware of what brought that world war to an end. A little more attention to our past would have allowed for better comprehension.

The sad part of all this is that I fully comprehend that such gaffes are going to occur again. Our attitude toward the past – many think something happening in 2001 is ancient – can be downright depressing.

We’re in for a lot of misery as a result, all because too many people think we, ourselves (that is what history is about) are too boring to study in depth.

  -30-

22 days and counting down

With just over three weeks prior to Election Day, I’m wondering how much the early voting centers are going to give us a clue as to how the campaign for governor will turn out.

As has been written here before, I’m convinced that a strong Chicago and inner-suburban voter turnout means we get “Four more years” of Gov. Pat Quinn.

IF THE URBAN portion of Illinois turns out to be apathetic, then we’ll get venture capitalist Bruce Rauner achieving a new hobby – being governor. I say it would be a hobby for him because he’s gone about saying he won’t take a salary or any retirement benefits for his government service.

I suspect that this is merely something he’d like to do in his fantasies, in the same way there are those of us who dreamed of being an outfielder for the Chicago Cubs.

I found the Chicago Sun-Times report on Sunday to be particularly interesting – the one about the We Ask America poll that contends Chicago-area people are more accepting of people with political backgrounds running for office, while those who live in the rest of Illinois actually like the idea of someone with a business background being in charge of state government.

I’m not sure people are really giving one’s business orientation all that much thought. It’s probably more the fact that Quinn is the Chicago-area candidate, while Rauner is the person whom people vote for if they hate the idea of someone with a Chicago orientation being in charge of state government.

WHICH IS PARTICULARLY ironic, because Rauner himself is of the Chicago suburbs but actually chooses to keep a residence in the city proper, and even famously tried to send his kid to school in Chicago.

A concept that I’m sure many non-Chicago-oriented Illinoisans find completely inconceivable.

Let’s not forget that a majority of those who voted in the Republican primary back in March picked someone other than Rauner. What this election truly is about is a “yes” or “no” for Pat Quinn. I don’t think many people truly care about Bruce.

So all these polls of recent weeks that show the campaign getting closer and closer probably are merely telling us that Chicago voters (along with those of the inner suburbs) are taking this election cycle more seriously than Rauner wanted them to.

IT IS THE reason why Quinn himself made countless campaign appearances on Saturday throughout south suburban Cook and Will counties, being seen with many area state legislators and Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., who want to create the image of being capable of bringing projects and grants back to their home communities.

Those are the suburbs that have become Democratic Party strongholds and could add to the potential of 80 percent of Chicago proper voters turning out for Quinn over Rauner. They would certainly ensure that the Republican patches of western and north suburban Cook County would be overcome come Nov. 4.

It’s all going to be about turnout. There probably won’t be any major gaffes that occur in the debates – at least if they’re anything like the first debate held last week in Peoria.

Just like I don’t expect the endorsement portion of the campaign cycle from newspapers is going to change anybody’s minds.

THE REALITY IS that newspapers are business interests. The idea of a “liberal media” is a myth – it’s more trivial than anything else at times.

Rauner is going to virtually sweep the cycle of every news media endorsement – particularly since the only newspaper that historically might have been inclined to back Quinn has made a big production out of saying it won’t back anybody. That goes for the many suburban news properties owned by the Chicago Sun-Times.

So Rauner being backed by the Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business, the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, and the joint endorsement published by the Joliet Herald News, the Kane County Chronicle and the Northwest Herald of Woodstock?

It’s nothing more than the source material for a future campaign ad by the Rauner people that brags about its significance, while the masses are more likely to follow the lead of their respective community in deciding whom they want to back.

  -30-

A bigger Sun-Times? Or diminished suburban press? All a matter of priorities

We’re at the end of the month, which means there’s been a significant change in the makeup of what passes for Chicago-area journalism these days. Whether it’s for good or bad depends so much on where one’s priorities are.

For the fate of the Chicago Sun-Times, I’m sure the moves that were made by the newspaper’s owners are a plus. They shore up what was a shrinking publication by combining all the editorial resources of the various newspapers the company publishes all at one site.

PERHAPS SOME ARE deluded into thinking it’s like the old days, with more people working out of what passes for the Sun-Times building (in my mind, the barge-like building on the Chicago River at Wabash Avenue will always be the paper’s true home) to put together a series of publications that when combined cover the entirety of the Chicago metropolitan area.

But the reality is that those suburban publications are gutted to the point where it is questionable whether they should be thought of as separate publications.

Is the SouthtownStar newspaper really now just the south suburban edition of the Sun-Times? Is the one-time Gary Post-Tribune really just an Indiana-oriented edition of The Bright One (which doesn’t look so bright to me)?

The same could be said for any of the other publications that stretch from Waukegan south down to Joliet, all of which shuttered their offices in recent days. Many editors whose duties could be done by someone else found themselves laid off of jobs.

SOME ARE NOW commuting downtown to do the work that is supposed to monitor communities such as Naperville, Aurora or Skokie.

As for reporters who are supposed to be hitting the streets, they’re now going to be among those expected to work out of their cars going from assignment to assignment.

Some will figure out ways of working from home (Will they get to wear pajamas all day?), or occasionally finding places with a wireless connection from which to actually file copy for the next day’s editions.

Along with the updates that are meant for the same day’s websites.

WHEN YOU THINK about it, where would modern-day journalism be if not for Starbucks? Those havens of free Internet connections are inadvertently going to make it possible for many publications to cut their operating expenses – which is what all of this restructuring is really about.

Now as one who has, on a few rare occasions, filed news stories for publication on deadline from a Starbucks, trust me when I say it stinks. Too many distractions. Way too many other people around. And invariably, you have to fight it out with these java-ed up junkies for a seat and table near an outlet.

Otherwise, you run the risk of your laptop computer losing power in mid-story. Why do I suspect that in the near future, some award-winning piece of journalism – perhaps even a potential Pulitzer Prize – will get lost due to electrical failure!

Although more important than that factor, there’s something about filing copy under such conditions that feels downright amateurish. You’d think that at a time when many publications are struggling to survive, the last thing they’d want to do is impose such restrictions on themselves?

THEN AGAIN, THERE are those who will view the cost-savings as impacting the bottom-line for this quarter. But what will they slash away at the next quarter so as to achieve their financial goals?

 

 

Ultimately, it’s all self-defeating. Because the lack of a home-base will wind up costing those publications stories that you pick up on by actually being there. And as for the surviving newspapers that aren’t a part of the spreading mass that comprises the Sun-Times Media Group, they may find themselves getting lazy if they’re not careful. Because it often is the presence of an aggressive competitor that motivates a newspaper to get off its collective duff and work just a bit harder.

It is why I feel like the suburban press has suffered a serious blow because many of the long-running newspapers that covered their communities are now doing nothing more than propping up the Chicago Sun-Times; enhancing the delusions of their current owners that (when all put together) they’re a bigger and more substantial newspaper than the Chicago Tribune.

One that, it seems, can’t even afford to pay its printing bills to the Tribune – whose presses now create the bulk of what passes for newspapers throughout the Chicago area. Which, when you think about it, is a sad set of circumstances all the way around!

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: As for the film posters, it is little more than some reminiscing on my part as to the public image of old of newspapers and reporting – the pursuit of which still has me hanging around newsrooms in search of what little romance remains. What happens if someone tries to make a “newspaper” film of the 21^st Century? Somehow, I doubt that a film with characters who spend all their time hanging around Starbucks so they can file their copy about press conferences where nobody says anything interesting or relevant would seem all that intriguing to moviegoers.

Change isn’t always for the better, or worse. It just sometimes happens

The faces of the two major metro newspapers that are the skeleton of much of the information we get in the Chicago area are on the verge of changing significantly in coming months, and I’m trying to figure out if it’s evolution – or degradation.

The kind of people who are all too eager to see newspapers wither away because they think the Internet will offer sufficient replacement for information are enjoying this – they want to believe it is evidence that the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times will soon die off.

THEY’LL ALSO CLAIM that this is all natural in the way that people change with the passage of time – accept it!

But I can’t help but think many people don’t really get what is happening with the changes; the fact that the Chicago Tribune will drop use of the Associated Press and that the Chicago Sun-Times plans to have all the editors of its suburban newspaper publications centrally located on the banks of the Chicago River.

Personally, I’m not bothered by the fact that the Tribune is dropping a wire service – although I’ll be the first to admit that my personal bias (I’m a former United Press International newsperson and bureau manager who thinks that AP is overrated) may be coming into play.

Many newspapers are overly-reliant on AP wire copy to fill their pages. Yet the Tribune is the newspaper that has the largest (by far) staff to write stories, and also subscribes to so many other wire services that they’re still going to have a plethora of copy to pick from when putting a paper together.

I’M SURE THE massive AP ego that thinks it is all important is hurt. But I honestly don’t see the loss. In fact, the part of this move that I don’t comprehend is that the Los Angeles Times (also a Tribune Co. newspaper) feels the need to keep the wire service – even though they use it less than the Chicago Tribune does.

So I don’t believe all the reaction that has arisen on the Internet to this move – the idea that the Tribune will be sold off to a new owner who will immediately renew a subscription.

I fully expect that whoever owns the newspaper in the future will see that the pages get filled without all those wire service bugs (ie., AP) in the paper, and will see the expense as one that could be done away with.

If anything, it is the other move that I find more troublesome – the restructuring of the Sun-Times and all of its sister newspapers. Although I concede that it really does nothing more than take the actions of recent years to the next step.

FOR THE SUN-TIMES and the suburban newspapers have been sharing stories to the point where the bulk of the Sun-Times these days is filled with suburban briefs. Those suburban publications have the feel of suburban-zoned editions of the Sun-Times.

It’s like we don’t have to read anything like the Post-Tribune of Merrillville, Ind., or the Herald News of Joliet because if they come up with a worthwhile story, it will run in the Chicago Sun-Times as well.

Now, the editors of those suburban papers will be working out of the Sun-Times offices downtown. The reporters will still be in the suburbs, but there won’t be newsrooms. A lot of suburban reporters are going to feel incredibly isolated from their publications – which never does any good.

It all has the feel of the Chicago Sun-Times using its suburban publications (some of which have a century-plus of history in their communities) to prop itself up – such as trying to perpetuate the nonsense that the Sun-Times has a larger circulation figure than the Tribune.

PERSONALLY, IT FEELS like a mismatch and that the assets being shifted to downtown will wind up not fitting in.

Of course, considering how Sun-Times leadership always likes to talk about the need to shift to an emphasis on digital sources for information, perhaps they’re not really concerned about the mish-mash they’re going to create.

Because I suspect that when it comes to news media organizations, there are too many people who look to Newsweek – which published its last edition, but plans to continue to exist as a website – and are trying to think happy thoughts.

I wonder how long such a website can continue. Just as I’m curious to see how long the DNA Info and Reboot Illinois websites can survive economically – even if they do manage to create worthwhile news reporting.

THE SAD PART is that too many people don’t realize how inferior, or third-hand, the information is that they’re getting free-of-charge from other websites that don’t have their own newsgathering resources.

Let’s not forget the Chicago News Cooperative, which did very high-quality reporting and commentary during its two-plus years of existence – only to have it wither away because people weren’t willing to pay what it was worth.

  -30-

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.

  -30-

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?

  -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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Dreadful news copy is the result of non-verdict in criminal trial of Blagojevich

We’re in the news desert these days – the jury that has the task of reaching a verdict in the criminal cases against former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his brother, Robert, has been at work for 10 days without giving us a clue as to when they will wrap things up.

Yet we have the reporter-types hanging out at the Dirksen Building (and not just the daily newspaper types who are there on a regular basis), all waiting for that moment when we learn whether the masses of Illinois will be happy (“guilty”) or seriously peeved “not guilty”) with the Blagojevich fate.

WHAT THAT MEANS is that we have had no real news, but reporters hanging around having to justify their existence.

Hence, we have in recent days read much in the way of pointless copy that does nothing to illuminate the public understanding of what is happening.

Now as a reporter-type myself, I have written such stories. They get done because an editor planning the next day’s newspaper in the morning hours has to figure out a rough average of what stories will be done.

That means he/she/it (all editors are non-entities) has to allow for the story to be headlined “Blagojevich Guilty!” If at day’s end, there is no such verdict, that space still has to be filled.

TAKE TUESDAY ALONE.

The Chicago Sun-Times gave us a story that purports to tell us just how financially broke the Blagojevich family is these days. It’s too bad Rod was an Elvis fan instead of one of Ray Charles. “Busted” could be his theme music these days when he enters the Dirksen Building courthouse. Rod Blagojevich didn't make Page One of the Chicago newspapers on Tuesday, and only warranted the lower left corner (slightly enlarged for readability) of Page One of the State Journal-Register of Springfield. Yet that doesn't mean the non-activity of his trial isn't getting covered.

You might have to help Blagojevich pay legal bills was the headline of the story that says his legal team likely will tap into public funds to ensure that they get paid something for the work they did in ensuring that the former governor’s legal rights were observed during the legal process leading up to the trial.

We also learned that Blagojevich’s once mighty campaign fund is down to $76,000 – having been drained to pay legal expenses thus far.

OF COURSE, ANYBODY who was paying attention during the process leading up to the trial would have known those facts, which also came up as part of the defense team’s attempt to make Blagojevich look less venal.

What they want us to think is, “how could a corrupt man be so broke?”

In short, I didn’t think much of Tuesday’s space filler, which would never have been published had the jury on Monday made the announcement that they had reached a verdict against Rod and Rob.

But yet I can’t help but think that it offered more substance than the Chicago Tribune, which told me on Tuesday that Blagojevich is using these past few days of waiting for a verdict to catch up on his reading – although they didn’t tell us what tome Rod is purusing these days.

THEN, WE GOT the account of the California man who, in a certain twisted sense, bears some resemblance to Rod Blagojevich.

He felt the need to buy a cheap airline ticket and fly to Chicago for a few days, just so he could be a part of the Dirksen Building “scene” during the trial. For his trip, he got himself “immortalized” by the Chicago Tribune and by the company’s long-time television station, WGN-TV, with other local TV feeling the need to follow the leader.

I guess that is journalistic synergy – the company’s various properties all report the same non-news so as to make it appear more credible. They’re competing over who can report the biggest trivia about the scene.

None of this, of course, would ever have been used had the jury reached a verdict. Not that I am surprised it is taking time. The surprise to me would have been if this whole matter had been resolved by now.

BUT THE POINT is that no matter how much some people desperate for attention speculate about the significance of the amount of time the jury is taking to reach a verdict, no one really knows what will happen.

Which is why we get reporter-types on call at the Dirksen Building – just waiting for that moment when they’re informed of the need to get their duffs into the courtroom because the jury has passed along a message saying they have made up their mind.

I have heard that officials are estimating that there will be only about 1 hour notice from the moment the jury actually reaches a verdict to the point that it is read in open court. So there’s no time really for someone to decide that their reporter (and camera crew, if we’re talking a TV type) could be put to better use elsewhere – and suddenly rushed over in the event of a verdict.

Which means that the jury verdict can’t come soon enough for me. Not so much that I really care what happens to Blagojevich. It is more that I want to be spared all of the nonsensical pseudo-news stories that will continue to be written to fill space until an actual verdict comes.

-30-