Chicago Daily Observer

The Daily Herald ran a story today (finally) investigating the claims of Dan Seals that he is a “current” adjunct professor at Northwestern University. As regular TA readers know well, this space has been extremely critical of Seals’ claims since last October that he is a “current” adjunct professor.

As the article sets up the issue, “In the 10th Congressional District’s Democratic primary campaign, candidate Dan Seals of Wilmette has touted his position as an adjunct professor at Northwestern University. But he doesn’t start that job until April. Are these guys [Seals and other candidates mentioned in the article] stretching the truth? Or are they outright lying?”

Chicago is gearing up for another round of tumult from the closing of possibly more than a half dozen failing schools. Whatever the Chicago Public Schools administration does to solve this problem, the parents of students have no choice but to cope.

Middle-class families exercise school choice by loading up a moving van and relocating to a suburb with good schools. The rich can afford private schools. Only the poor—often minorities in inner cities with under-performing schools—are stuck with little or no choice.

In perhaps the shortest tenure of any editorial board editor in my memory, the Sun-Times’ chief opinion-maker, Cheryl Reed, has quit, and not without cause.

According to her, newspaper management inappropriately fiddled with the paper’s editorial endorsements of Barack Obama and John McCain, without telling her. I would have quit too (I served on the Sun-Times editorial board for 22 years), but not for the high-and-mighty, ego-inflating reason offered by Reed. To me, it would have been a clear signal by the publisher and owner that they had lost confidence in me, and it was time to go. The failure to collaborate on changes made in copy is something that’s done to rookie reporters, not editorial page editors. The message from management to Reed was simple and clear: You blew it.

But, instead of being embarrassed by this rebuke, she has turned this reproach into a badge of martyrdom. In ... Read More...

The Sun-Times gets to dump another salary—Cheryl Reed, the editorial page editor, has quit, and quite spectacularly.

A couple of weeks ago I heard that she’d turned in her resignation—she couldn’t have been a happy camper after layoffs cost her about half her staff. But she was talked out of it (by publisher Cyrus Freidheim himself), and editor in chief Michael Cooke issued a memo telling the staff to ignore the rumors: “She’s with us for the battle.”

Sun-Times Media Group. Inc. said late Monday that directors are weighing a number of “strategic alternatives,” including a possible sale of the struggling Chicago publishing concern.

The board’s decision to “explore strategic next steps” is “the right thing to do the ensure the future of the Sun-Times Media Group publications and Web sites and to generate the highest value for our shareholders,” said Cyrus Freidheim, the holding company’s Chief Executive Officer.