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!

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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.

Starbuck's closes its way into racial squabble w/ Chicago-area closing

I’ll give the people with Starbuck’s a little bit of credit – I don’t think the Seattle-based gourmet coffee retailer intended to provoke a race war when they picked which of their Chicago-area stores would be among the 600 nationwide to be closed.

But that is what they have managed to provoke with their choice.

WHEN STARBUCK’S RELEASED their list of coffee shops across the country that will be shuttered due to rising costs and declining profit margins, only one was a franchise located in Cook County.

Hence, only the people of Country Club Hills, a southern suburb, will lose their ability to purchase coffee in the various exotic blends and funky-sounding sizes that the retailer has used to create their corporate personality.

Now as it turns out, I have parents living in the towns both to the west (Tinley Park) and east (Homewood) of Country Club Hills. Both of those towns each have two Starbuck’s franchises in their boundaries.

So one can make a legitimate argument that the Starbuck’s store that was part of the strip mall at 167th Street and Crawford Avenue (in the city, we call it Pulaski Road) will not be missed. There are other Starbuck’s stores within a 10 to 15 minute drive of the soon-to-be-defunct location.

AND FOR THOSE who would argue that people without cars will not easily be able to get to the other locations, I’d argue that the strip mall in Country Club Hills was at a location distant from residential areas. No one from a nearby neighborhood with any sense was walking to the store in question.

So on paper, the corporate decision makes sense. But facts and figures on paper do not always take into account the raw emotions that exist. In this case, those emotions are racial, and they are behind the differing perceptions of the motivations behind the corporate action.

Country Club Hills (in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau) is a town of 16,169 people, of whom 81.9 percent are African American.

The two surrounding towns that each will continue to have two Starbuck’s franchises are majority white. Homewood is 78.1 percent Anglo, although a black population was at 17.5 percent in 2000, and evidence exists to show it has grown in the past eight years.

BUT IT IS the other town that has the black activist in everybody upset. Tinley Park is a Chicago suburb of 93.2 percent white people (only 1.9 percent African American). And officials note that at a time when the chain is closing stores (and putting on hold plans to build stores in places such as the nearby suburb of Lansing), they went ahead and opened a second Tinley Park franchise – located directly across the street from the existing store.

These particular dueling Starbuck’s stores are about a five-minute drive from where my mother lives, and I can personally attest that Starbuck’s is not lying when they say that the existing location is in a strip mall with a set layout.

There was no way to amend the structure, particularly not if the goal was to have a drive-up window for people who need their gourmet coffee fix but are too lazy to get off their duffs and out of the car to make their purchase.

The new location on the east side of Harlem Avenue is a new structure, so the drive-up window was included in the design. Corporate officials won’t say so, but it would appear obvious that the old location will eventually be closed once its lease expires (which local newspapers report is in about two years).

SO FOR THE time being, Tinley Park, Ill., will go from being the home of the Bettenhausen family of auto racing fame to being the place where Starbuck’s fights a “civil war” of sorts for the loyalties of the area’s coffee drinkers.

Seriously, the SouthtownStar newspaper published a story Wednesday quoting locals who insist they will remain loyal to the old store, and don’t like the idea of having to walk across the street.

But to the people in neighboring Country Club Hills (the two towns are separated by Interstate 57, which is generally considered the demarcation point between the south and southwest suburbs), they see it as an issue of their predominantly black town losing a franchise so that their white neighbor can have two stores.

Even those black people willing to look at the issue somewhat rationally find it sad that their town’s economic demographics were considered unacceptable by corporate officials in Seattle to maintain the Starbuck’s store.

DOES THIS SOUND ridiculous?

To some, they will want to complain that Country Club Hills officials are guilty of “playing the race card” in being critical of Starbuck’s.

But I see the whole incident (which got significant amounts of airtime in a story broadcast Wednesday by ABC-owned WLS-TV) as more evidence of the way black and white people can perceive the same circumstances so differently.

In a way, it is no different than the poll commissioned by the New York Times, which on Wednesday reported on the differing perceptions of the presidential campaign of Democrat Barack Obama – based on the race of the person being questioned.

WHEN ASKED, “WHO has a better chance of getting ahead in today’s society?,” 53 percent of white people questioned said they think the two races are equal, with 35 percent saying white people have a better chance of succeeding in our society.

When it came to black people, 64 percent think white people have better chances of success, with only 30 percent thinking the two races have equal chances.

There also was the question of whether race relations in this country were “generally good or bad?” Fifty-nine percent of black people picked “bad” while 55 percent of white people picked “good.”

As much as I’d like to say these statistics sadden me, I have to admit they do not surprise me. I still remember how naïve I thought it was when the Wall Street Journal ran a lengthy story last November entitled "Whites' Great Hope?" about the Obama presidential campaign having the potential to be one that forevermore puts aside race as an issue.

HOW CAN WE be expected to put aside race when it comes to something significant like a presidential election?

We’re in a situation in this country where the closing of a coffee shop (particularly one as generic as a Starbuck’s franchise) can be cause for a racial debate. They might not be as blatantly offensive as they were a half century ago, but we’re nowhere near resolving the racial tensions of this country.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: It lasted for barely over one year, but the Starbuck’s franchise in the predominantly African-American suburb of Country Club Hills (http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6269041) is history.

Tinley Park’s “War of the Starbuck’s” is a case (http://www.southtownstar.com/news/1058004,071608starbucks.article) of misplaced consumer loyalty.

We the people of this country can’t even agree on whether racial overtones exist with the closing of a coffee franchise. Why should we be expected to agree on the racial (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/us/politics/16poll.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) perceptions involved in the presidential campaign?