More scut-work, less ‘news’

I’m not going to join the gathering of people who feel compelled to trash Journatic – an entity designed to do the “scut-work” of putting together local information so it can be published in newspapers.

Will more and more of these boxes be empty?



It’s not that I think much of the type of information the company says it produces. If anything, the company has been fairly honest about what it intends to produce – which isn’t anything of any real substance.

THEY’RE TRYING TO make a profit off the production of all that routine information that readers might want, but is so labor-intensive (and costly) to produce.

And they’re taking advantage of the inherent laziness of some publications in wanting to have people do real work (at real pay) by offering to do it for them.

Among those publications is the Chicago Tribune, which for about a month had a contract with Journatic to produce much of the information that fills the pages of those TribLocal sections that the newspaper inserts into the copies of the paper that sell in the suburbs that they deem worthy.

They used to have a combination of staff and freelance writers to produce the sections, until the Tribune thought it could have the sections at a discount.

SO THE FACT that the techniques by which Journatic operates to produce scut-work sound borderline sleazy doesn’t really reflect poorly on that company – since I never expected much of anything from them to begin with.

I’m bothered by the Tribune management that was looking for a way to cut corners and reduce their costs while pretending to offer some improved journalistic benefit.

And now that they’re trying to be all high-minded and holier-than-thou by saying they will no longer use Journatic content, that is what really offends me.

Tribune-types should have known exactly what they were getting when they signed on with this company. If they didn’t, they were clueless. If they did and went ahead with the deal anyway, that makes all this outrage the company now expresses just a bunch of bunk.

AS FAR AS I’m concerned, phony outrage is more appalling than the idea of Philippines-based “writers” putting Anglo-sounding bylines on their copy to make it look like it was produced in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

It will be intriguing to see what becomes of those TribLocal sites (which some Tribune readers never see if they happen to live in a community or neighborhood that marketing-types believe is unworthy of such an effort), since the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that the Tribune has no plans to hire more people to do the work.

Which means we’re talking about existing staff having to take on a larger workload. More scut-work for swamped staff – which means less “news.”

Of course, we’re also getting less access to “news” because of the loss of WIQI-FM as a news-format radio station. The news format never caught on with listeners, causing management to dump all the talk on Tuesday and convert to an “adult hits” format.

BUT I WONDER if anyone is even going to notice. The ratings for the radio station were really that low. The most attention they ever got may have been for those nonsensical billboards they ran using Rod Blagojevich’s picture (then pasting over a smiley-face with a funky blue hairdo when Blagojevich’s attorneys objected).

It seems the station had counted on the idea of a clear-sounding FM signal as their gimmick to get people away from long-running newsradio WBBM-AM. Except that the CBS station got its own FM simulcast.

No more!!!!



Which made the self-described “FM News” sound like a flightier take on real news. I heard some people claim the station was “news, with a hip-hop flava.” Although on the few occasions I heard the station, it struck me as a pop station stuck in the ‘80s and thinking it was “hip.” The kind of people who think that "cutting edge" is Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo in Michael Jackson's hit song, "Beat It."

Maybe the radio station’s fate is merely evidence that more serious information will always prevail, and that the real problem is those executives who believe the problem with modern-day “media” is that it wastes so much time on “news.”

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Somebody ‘splain this to me!

Who’d have thought that Rod Blagojevich (or his image, actually) still has the ability to sell?

Who thinks this image sells?



Because it seems that for as many people who claim they can’t stand the former Illinois governor-turned-federal inmate, perhaps there are those who will find some appeal in him.

MAYBE IT’S THAT hair? I honestly don’t get it.

Because what got me to start thinking in these terms was while I was out driving Thursday night. I was headed through suburban Calumet City north on Burnham Avenue (which city-dwellers know is really named Avenue O) when I stumbled across an advertising billboard for the Chicago news-oriented radio station WIQI-FM.

Actually, it is one of those stations that doesn’t seem to like to think of itself in terms of call-letters. It calls itself FM101.1 – which my guess the letters IQI are meant to look (sort of) like the numerals 101.

As for why they didn’t just go for the call letters WIOI, it seems a radio station in Portsmouth, Ohio (which plays the “music of your life” for people across Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia) has beaten them to it.

ALTHOUGH PERHAPS THE “Q” can also be perceived as a “tribute,” of sorts, to the days when the 101.1 frequency in Chicago was used by the old Q-101 pop music-oriented station that also gave us Mancow Muller (whatever became of him?)

But back to the point of the billboard. I nearly lost control of my automobile when I saw Blagojevich’s pre-prison image (his hair was still dyed jet black, rather than the shades of brown that it has supposedly turned to since his incarceration began earlier this year).

Along with the slogan, “He NEVER listens to FM101.1 News!”

These people do!



I suppose being out in the suburbs of Denver, it would be difficult for Milorod to pick up the signal on any radio he might be permitted to own.

AND INSOFAR AS trying to listen to the station through its website, I’m not sure how much Internet access federal inmates get. Considering that it might not be much, I’d hate to think he was wasting his time tuning in to Chicago news-oriented radio.

It’s just that I find the combination of these images to be a bizarre one. I’m not sure what message the station is trying to send.

I’m serious when I say if anyone can explain it to me, I’m willing to listen.

I would think that the Blagojevich mug on the billboard would be enough to turn off so many people. Even for those news-oriented geeks who want to know every trivial detail that is happening, who cares much about Blagojevich these days.

HE’S NOT GOING to be making much in the way of real news, unless we literally get a prison riot and he somehow gets hurt (which is something that I’m sure a few twisted individuals in our society are too eagerly hoping for).

Of course, there’s also the smart-aleck in me that reads the “He NEVER listens” portion of that slogan and says something along the lines of, “Nobody EVER listens” to that station.

Seriously, I haven’t heard anything to indicate that it’s doing much in the way of ratings. Then again, just about every radio station is down, ratings-wise, because so many young people are so determined to listen to their iPods or other portable devices that making them turn to a radio seems, to them, quite quaint -- even more so than picking up anything printed on paper.

There’s also the fact that the station (in my opinion, at least) seems a bit trivial. I have heard some say they are trying to put a “hip-hop” spin on the news of the day. Which strikes me as being an odd characterization.

ANYBODY WHO SENSES “hip-hop” in listening to the station probably thinks Vanilla Ice is cutting edge in urban pop.

And apparently, they also are deluded enough to think that Blagojevich’s face will encourage anybody to tune in to listen to the news headlines.

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