Chicago Daily Observer

What total junk. Fine if you want to put this on the OpEd page, but on the front page?!

Tribune “reporter” Naftali Bendavid, apparently based in DC, writes an Obama propaganda piece, “Obama courts Jewish vote as doubts persist”.

The doubts come from Obama’s own words and actions which continue to be reprehensible, but Bendavid joins the whining Barack chorus claiming it’s some kind of “far right” conspiracy by his use of sanitizing words and neglecting to mention salient facts. Obama fundraiser and professor friend Rashid Khalidi is described by Bendavid as a “Palestinian activist” when he in fact was a PR operative for the terrorist PLO.

Occasionally, Maya Brachear actually writes about religion as the Chicago Tribune’s Religion Reporter. Many of her columns are tolerable enough as sort of statistical analysis and trendwatch for a secular newspaper.

However, in her blog post yesterday she veered into journalistic trick/rant more suited to her rival at the Sun-Times than someone who observes and analyzes religion, rather than practicing partisan politics. Maya tells us (accurately):

Then Brachear questions:

A hearty congratulations to our colleagues over at the Chicago Tribune who 25 minutes ago published the fact that Governor Blagojevich has suffered a “thwart” in Cook County Court.

After a mere 7 months of unreported court proceedings the Trib found the space this evening to note that our governor was in a fairly messy court case that drug the Comptroller, Attorney General, the Secretary of State, a Republican Gubernatorial Candidate from 2006 through Cook and Sangamon County Courts systems.

Constitutional and day to day operational issues were at stake in the case, so it was imperative to the Tribune to not cover the story whatsoever until after Judge Epstein made a ruling.

Courageously, the Tribune was able to refrain from mentioning the lead plantiff in the case, Richard Caro, and a co-plantiff Ron Gidwitz, as to avoid any important facts which might identify involvement in the case.

No word ... Read More...

Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s (D-Ill.) name has cropped up quite a few times in the ongoing trial of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) benefactor Tony Rezko. Yet in their latest coverage, both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times left out Blagojevich’s party affiliation. The Sun-Times, however, did take note of the Republican party affiliation of another politico caught up in the maelstrom, William Cellini.

The caption for a photo montage accompanying the April 3 article “Levine: Blagojevich knew”, reads, “Clockwise from left: Gov. Rod Blagojevich; Tony Rezko; Stuart Levine;Chicago businessman-turned-Hollywood producer Tom Rosenberg; longtime Illinois Republican Party power William Cellini.”

Tribune staffers Bob Secter and Jeff Coen also covered the development in a story filed shortly after midnight Eastern time on April 3.

This isn’t the first time Secter and Coen left out the (D) after Blagojevich’s name. As NewsBusters contributor and MRC News Analysis intern Lyndsi Thomas noted on ... Read More...

We learned a little bit more about Barack Obama’s meetings with the city’s editorial boards to discuss Tony Rezko on Chicago Tonight Monday night. Carol Marin moderated. The panel: Investigative reporter David Jackson and deputy editorial page editor John McCormick from the Tribune and reporter Chris Fusco and editorial writer Deborah Douglas from the Sun-Times. Let’s take a look.

*

(Direct quotes will be in quote marks; the rest is from my notes but pretty close to verbatim.)

MARIN: Why did Obama do this now?

JACKSON: The Tribune “was preparing to run a story in Sunday’s paper that listed the unanswered questions.”

In the WWII Sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, an illuminating laugh-getter was for the Allied POW‘s to observe the choice of the hapless Col. Klink, then chose the opposite. As Klink was generally wrong, inverting his decision tended to have good results.

Brilliantly, The Sun Times has picked up on the Klink Heuristic in endorsing Republican Jim Oberweis in the 14th Disctrict of the US House. The “Republican” Tribune has endorsed Oberweis opponent, Democrat Bill Foster.

Simply inverting the opinion of the Tribune is bound to be a major improvement over the Cheryl Reed Sun-Times. Well Done, Bright One!

The Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post have articles today about the official handover of power in Cuba from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul (Raul Castro actually took the helm on a “temporary” basis in 2006).

Ah, it all sounds so peaceful and democratic, doesn’t it? Reading this, you’d almost think there was a choice.

You couldn’t ask for a bigger task. Turn around a newspaper giant when the newspaper business is sinking fast, perhaps irretrievably. There are few institutions more stodgy and resistant to innovation than a newspaper, and especially a large one like the Chicago Tribune.

Sam Zell and his band of unconventional managers are trying anyway. I like their style. This presentation is instructive and entertaining. If anybody can break the mindset and possibly reinvent the product, it might be Zell.

Do you remember watching previous Tribune management talks to employees on the Internet? This is more than a shakeup—it’s an upheaval.

In further Adventures of the Ed Page at Chi Trib, we see or may surmise that State’s Attorney Dick Devine went for top billing for an op-ed with this, beginning thus:

In recent weeks the Tribune has mentioned prosecutorial “misconduct” in its editorial pages. This is a term that grabs the public’s attention, so it is important that the efforts of our office on this issue be stated.

Nothing doing, as the world turned. Instead, unlike Mayor Daley yesterday and Congr. Jesse Jackson Jr. the day before, he is awarded no such encomium. His Voice of the People contribution, on the other hand, is a mere letter, albeit the lede.

No surprise there. He’s county, neither city nor congressional district, and lame duck besides.

Substantively speaking, he offers this as part of his defense of his office, recently criticized in a primary campaign and already criticized in the general:

“Our ... Read More...

He’s at it again.

In this week’s Works, I wrote about a recent press conference where Mayor Daley denounced the county assessor’s office and called for widespread “corrections” to property tax assessments.

Now, in today’s Tribune, there’s an op-ed by the mayor

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oped0213daleyfeb13,0,4892131.story

that tells a few more whoppers about his role in our property tax system.

The Chicago Tribune has dedicated some editorial resources to reading other publications to find out more about Todd Stroger’s planned reorganization of the Cook County Hospitals management. The Editorial Board at the Trib tells us that they do not like what they are reading in other publications about this reorg.

The Tribune’s coverage of the shakeup has been limited to one story, which also questions how independent this board can be. It is a good question, but still begs for some background. How does the Tribune hold off on a story like this for a week without publishing any details of the proposal? Is the crack staff at the Tribune so busy telling us that Barak Obama is probably not a Muslim (today’s hapless lead op-ed, and similarly hapless feature in the Tribune’s “Seeker” blog) or digging into Drew Peterson’s Ebay sales to skip the #1 ... Read More...

In case you missed the Daily Herald story about an independent board being set up to manage Cook County Hospitals, or if you are not a Crain’s subscriber (the story, while on the front page of the print edition, is not freely available online, nor via syndication), you might have missed one of the biggest developments in Cook County.

Cook County Hospitals are the biggest line item on the county budget. The Tribune and Sun Times have mercilessly (and perhaps justifiably) pounded away at the Stroger administration’s mis-manangement. One might ask, if mis-management is something new in the healthcare industry, but Trib and Sun-Times have put a lot of ink to explaining how Todd Stroger has botched things up, something that we might assume was not the case in the previous administration, given the new found dedication of the Trib/Sun-Times to muckrakery about 1900 Polk.

Perhaps overwhelmed by promotion ... Read More...

With 2008 being the Chinese Year of the Rat, it seems fitting to gnaw through the Chicken-Wire Curtain built by the Chicago Media and break out stories that have been either ignored or suppressed by the major newspapers and broadcast outlets. Here are the top picks of the Chicago Daily Observer Editors for Most Underreported Stories of 2007

1) Richard Caro vs. Rod Blagojevich. As you might guess from our coverage, this one is a layup. The major media (save Dennis Byrne) has completely ignored this important constitutional case pitting Lawyer Richard Caro, Businessman Ron Gidwitz, and Attorney General Lisa Madigan against Governor Rod Blagojevich in Cook County Court, hashing out the powers of the Illinois Executive, with good deal of Chicago Style political intrigue being played out via the courts system.

2) Major changes at Chicago’s Airports. Given Chicago’s long history as the transportation hub of the United States, ... Read More...

s the year ends, a time to reflect . . .

Former CEO Dennis FitzSimons, who gave the Tribune Company 25 years, just walked out the door Sam Zell held open with a package worth $38.3 million in severance and stock. The sums bandied about in civil litigation were vastly larger, but in the end Conrad Black was convicted of stealing $6.1 million from Hollinger International and he just got six and a half years in prison. Maybe he should have fired himself instead.

The Tribune published a not very well thought out Op-Ed by Tracey Barnett, pumping “Republic 2.0”, a not very well thought out book by University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein.

Sunstein’s claim is that people filter information they want to read using technical tools on the internet, blocking out opposing opinion.

Of course this isn’t even close to a novel thought (or true for that matter, read a comments section sometime and tell me you can’t find differences of opinion), but the Trib did something to make it all the more interesting.

Note that the 4 comments disagreeing with the Op-Ed have been removed, and 2 new ones supporting the Op-Ed have been added.

I suppose one ... Read More...

Newspapers are dead. They didn’t have to be, but their window of opportunity closed long ago.— Steve Rhodes, Beachwood Reporter, a blog.

“I’m sick and tired of listening to everybody talk about and commiserate over the end of newspapers. They ain’t ended, they’re not going to end and I think they have a great future.” – Sam Zell, new Tribune Co. boss.

My money is on Sam. And my apologies to Zell for mentioning Rhodes in the same breathe.

Rhodes apparently doesn’t catch the irony of pronouncing newspapers DOA, while he fuels his blog with daily rants about…newspapers. If Rhodes is right that the papers already are dead, I guess that means he’s living off a cadaver.

But Rhodes isn’t alone. He appeared on a recent WTTW-TV Chicago Tonight panel dissecting the industry’s supposed death throes. But as Mark Twain might have advised, it’s always dangerous to pronounce ... Read More...

To their credit, the Springfield State Journal Register is carrying the story of yesterday’s dismissal of the Ron Gidwitz/Illinois Coalition for Jobs case vs. Barry Maram and Dan Hynes challenging Governor Blagojevich’s unilateral spending allocations.

The Tribune has not noticed the dismissal, though they did cover the case itself twice, while the Sun-Times carried neither the case nor the dismissal.

None of the two Chicago newspapers have reported the existence of Richard Caro case vs. Governor Blagojevich, though the SJ-R references the case, without context.

It will be interesting to see how if the Tribune decides to carry any information about the Caro case, as the reason for the dismissal of the Gidwitz case was that the Caro case is already pending.

Given that the Tribune has refused to acknowledge the existence of the Caro case, how will they explain the dismissal? Such a dilemma when you are ignoring the ... Read More...

Tribune Company and the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission are locking horns over the proposed $8.2bn buy-out of the media group by Sam Zell, the real estate entrepreneur, in a stand-off that threatens to derail the deal.

Tribune has warned the FCC that the takeover is at risk of collapsing if it does not receive regulatory clearance in the next two weeks.

Good for the Southtown!

Among political columnists who are fun to read I like Peggy Noonan in the “Wall Street Journal”…because she is a brilliant wordsmith (although I have detected a taste of sour grapes about the Republicans who apparently, and foolishly, passed her up for White House director of communications). But she is an absolute marvel to read. She appears in the WSJ every Saturday. The imagery is about as clever as that of Maureen Dowd another of my favorites but far more sophisticated.

Locally I have been avidly reading Kristen McQueary (and as result asked her to be on my WLS-AM radio show yesterday). She has a realistic and properly skeptical view of the process without being unduly cynical. I particularly liked….didn’t necessarily agree with but liked…her column last week on Judy Biggert the multi-millionaire Republican congresswoman who has a cushy federal medical benefit as all ... Read More...

It’s not that the “Tribune” has improved so vastly but that in competition with the adolescent semi-porn “Sun-Times,” any paper that writes straightforwardly for adults has to look good.

Still the “Trib” has had several features this week that shows it’s determined to improve as a world-class paper. Sara Olkon’s front-page article on Beauty Turner, the former assistant editor of “Residents’ Journal,” who lost her job, is outstanding. Also—huzza!—the editorials are moving toward taking a definite position instead of pro-con-pro-con and winding up with “who knows?” or “stay tuned.” The “What did the pilots say? that points out the people’s right to know what NASA thinks about airport safety may—you could say—that it is an easy call…but in the old days the “Trib” would make the point that NASA should submit its findings through an establishment bureaucracy and then conclude: it is too early to make a final ... Read More...

A few weeks ago, friends of the late Mike Royko gathered at Wrigley Field to observe the ten year anniversary of his death. Royko was a lifelong fan of the Cubs, a team that he often lampooned and ridiculed. After seeing the Cubs manage to make a final World Series appearance during his adolescence, Royko watched the team as it bottomed out completely. Royko bemoaned the clumsy players that masqueraded as professional athletes on the Chicago roster, frequently venting his anger and disgust in print. He took solace by playing sixteen inch softball and was inducted into the Chicago Softball Hall of Fame. It was altogether fitting and proper that his family and friends assembled at the Friendly Confines to toast his memory.

Thinking of Royko, put me in mind of his final years writing columns for the Tribune. It was not an entirely happy employer/employee relationship. Royko had taken ... Read More...