The Blog

ah, well....seems there's only one woman left in chicago, anyway, since michelle moved east. so why bother having them in any news organization?

@ Pat Kampert

"In an era when there are fewer watchdogs for politicians and government budgets, any new journalism enterprise should be welcomed, not picked apart."

What an absurd statement. We want them to be successful and find a new business model that's actually good and works. There are going to be a lot of ideas thrown around that, frankly, suck. If we don't pick them apart, then we're just going to be stuck with another boatload of crap.

Also: journalism IS "picking things apart." That's called doing your job.

@Alan/Andrew - John Kass is busy, he's just been appointed by Obama as the 'Chicago Way' czar, so you boys can get a room & relax.

@Alan -- ;-)

. . . wonder whatever happened to him, that is.

@Andrew -- You know what? So do I.

@Alan -- Hey, I started out at City Hall from '81-'83 along with some other kid named John Kass who was with the Daily Calumet (d. 1983 or so and then, again, 1987). Whatever happened to him? ;-)

@allan - thanks ... haven't paid much attention to the physical delivery of any paper product since publishing a little rag of my own in the mid-90s, but my thinking was - this is the New York Times vs. what's left of the World's Greatest Newspaper & CNC is presumably only starting w/ 2 pages....just thinking the day may come when the trib's need to minimize costs is outweighed by their need to maximize the NYT's.

@Andrew -- I would've gone into classical-music criticism, but how could I compete with the likes of Von Rhein, Delacoma and Patner? Plus, I don't know a horn from a fluegel.
@DeBartolo -- Don't the Tribune and Sun-Times share some distribution resources? These days, the need to find revenue sources or minimize costs dilutes competitive juices.

@MrG - thanks for the link ... after listening to O'Shea for 9 minutes personally flush out his vision, it seems more worthwhile & solid a plan than anything else that's been floated - regardless of the writers involved ... can only hope they get the numbers required to keep it afloat.

that said, a question for any of the micro newspaper distribution experts who might have an answer -- recall yrs ago the NYT & trib had some sort of home delivery deal ... wondering if that's still in effect & how the trib might see things differently if CNC is successful in helping turn the NYT into more of a local threat than it is already.

@ Alan -- Wow, condo building parties at your place must be a blast. ;-) Is this why you went into travel writing? ;-)

You can see an interview with Jim O'Shea talking about the Chicago News Cooperative on "Chicago Tonight" at the following website.
http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=42,1

make that "perfect world." everybody needs an editor.

@Andrew

Knowing these neighbors, my guess is the ones who don't subscribe to any newspaper buy and/or pick up an occasional six-pack -- no newspapers, no newsmagazines, not even a Reader -- and likely don't even read news items on the Web unless teasers include "Lohan," "sex," "A-Rod" or, in a perfect word, all three.

Just a guess.

Cheers.

Let's follow the people in Alan's condo building and see what papers they buy and/or pick up outside of the building on weekdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. ;-)

@Pelham

And to expand a bit on my condo's subscriber list, in the interest of total Truth in Demography: Of the seven units whose subscribers take the Tribune, six are in units whose owners are 55+. The subscribing younger couple -- "younger" in this case meaning probably late-30s -- gets the Trib, NYTimes and Journal. Three units whose residents are in their 20s or early 30s get no papers delivered at all.

@Alan Solomon

RedEye isn't alone. I think that sort of thing is how USA Today has historically enhanced its circulation count.

In an era when there are fewer watchdogs for politicians and government budgets, any new journalism enterprise should be welcomed, not picked apart.

I have to agree with my friend and former colleague, Al Solomon. (I'm a former Trib reporter and editor laid off last year.) Jim O'Shea is a terrific journalist; Jim Warren is just as talented. They both have a boatload of integrity too. You can't go wrong with those two and Ann Marie Lipinski in your camp, and I speak as someone who didn't personally know Jim O. or Ann Marie all that well. Could the Trib have been more aggressive in the past? Definitely. I am consistently and pleasantly surprised at the tenacious quality of the content my friends who remain at the Trib continue to publish with such a smaller staff. But most of the Trib's problems were industrywide or financial issues that Lipinski and O'Shea largely had no control over.

I also was saddened to see my former colleague throw Jim Warren under the bus in Gawker. Jim bent over backwards to help that writer and position him for success, and didn't deserve such shabby treatment. Jim also is one of the most progressive thinkers the industry has, even though he was not given the green light to execute some of his best ideas.

Pelham, for the record: In my 11-unit condo building in Lincoln Park, seven units subscribe to the Tribune daily and Sunday, three to the New York Times daily and one more on Sunday, four take the Wall Street Journal and one (me) gets the Sun-Times.

In addition, a RedEye arrives delivered on Saturday -- which is curious because the person who subcribed to it moved out more than a year ago (which invites questions about RedEye circulation, but never mind that now).

The gawker guy does make a couple of points that ring true. What I've heard from a handful of Tribune employees (former employees now) over the years and what I've consistently gleaned from comments here and elsewhere is that the Trib has historically been quite a timid institution, particularly under Lipinski. And the fact that the gawker guy never once met a Trib subscriber in the city meshes with my experience every morning as I watch the the paper carrier drive down my densely populated North Side block and drop off exactly one copy of the Trib, plus a couple of copies of the NYT a few doors down.

As for running wire copy on the front page, I see no shame in that. I liked the old Tribune, which apparently made some effort to pick the best stories of the day and put 5 or 6 of them on the front. If they were all from wires or all local, it didn't matter to me. I appreciated the editing function that put them right up front for me. It was evidence that some intelligence--rather than local or institutional boosterism-was at work.

Moreover (I say as I remount my now swayback hobbyhorse) the apparent assumption that local news ought nearly always to take precedence over national and international news and events is deeply flawed. Most of the forces that determine our well-being or lack of it are concentrated in Washington and Wall Street. If this NYT project somehow serves to put the final seal on the idea that Chicago (and, by extension, the rapidly deindustrializing Midwest) simply will not have any kind of serious national or global journalistic presence, then we're all screwed.

The model of what I'd like to see in this regard doesn't exist and hasn't in recent memory. When the Tribune had a Washington bureau, it was simply a me-too operation, tagging along after the big guys. It's foreign coverage was a little more distinguished, with fine reporters like Paul Salopek, Liz Sly, Tom Hundley and Kim Barker, among others. But their voices were individual. Nowhere in the Tribune's national or global coverage was there any consistent trace of a Midwestern perspective.

Still, the Tribune--unique among papers in the center of the country--had potential, emphasis on "had." They've abandoned that. And now we're left with the East Coast journo triumvirate of the NYT, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, along with the silly broadcast media that piggyback off their lead. These papers are tailored to a readership and a leader class whose interests are nearly diametrically opposed to those of us sitting out here in the Rust Belt. It's not a happy situation.

well, if former trib employees don't know what they're talking about, a former freelancer certainly doesn't have a clue, but this one vividly recalls pitching casino gambling content sometime after the regional boats were established 'cause the state's gaming revenue numbers clearly showed people were losing big on an old carnival spin-the-wheel game which was a very bad bet, only to be told to forget it 'cause "gambling was a sin."

let's leave it at that.

Sorry, John Cook and "skeptical," but speaking as another "former Tribune employee" (see above Gawker link), being a former Tribune employee is not necessarily an indication that one knows what the hell one is talking about, even regarding the Chicago Tribune. Let's leave it at that.

Here's a dissenting opinion from a Gawker blogger and former Tribune employee.

http://gawker.com/5387797/new-york-times-h…

By the way, the banner over the new, improved Sports page,"Smack," should also carry the caveat, "Expired after Jim Rome wore the phrase out 10 years ago." If they really want to compete with the Sun-Times, maybe they also should steal the ST's whole "In Your Face" marketing campaign, too.

Good luck on the Twittering thing ... apparently an ability to chew gum and cross a street
simultaneously no longer will be the test of cross-sensory coordination. It will be the ability to Twitter and a watch a ballgame and respond to Twittees simultaneously ... or Twitter and watch a Lyric Opera performance and respond to the Twits, er, Twittees simultaneously ... or Twitter and understand what's being said at a news confernce, formulate a question, ask the question and, then, respond to subscribers simultaneously. Better to have a reporter, columnist or critic who observes events, and someone else, sitting next to her, Twittering to the seven or eight people who aren't more interested in Twittering about Balloon Boy, Jon and Kate, and the First Lady's hula hoop.

Oh, but that would require more personnel ... never mind. Maybe they could pay CNC to cover events with its own reporters -- not "board members" -- who will work for free or 10 cents a word.

(How many New Age journalists will it take to replace a burned-out light bulb over a work station? A lot: one to call a janitor to replace the bulb; another to Twitter it to subcribers; another to blog about it; another to illustrate the process in a graphic device; another to construct a map, explaining where the light socket was in relation to other sockets in the building, city, state, country, continent and planet; another to survey on-line techies about the efficacy of using traditional round bulbs or those new twisty things; another to write about the procedure for the next morning's paper; another to send the story out on the mojo wire; someone at the HuffPost to re-write the piece under his own byline; another to editorialize on it; a pair of columnists to argue about it via IM dispatches; another to constuct a clari based on an inaccuracy of the original item; an editor to call up Editor & Publisher to brag about how much more economical it's become to screw in a lightbulb in the newsroom of the future; a marketing team to insist that the Trib does such things way better and cooler than the S-T; a publisher to decide that the job could have been performed more efficiently if it were outsourced to a janitorial team in the Philippines and, then, announce a new round of layoffs; and someone to leak the memo to Romenesko.)

oh contraire, this has to be the best news we've had since learning last friday @ least 3 of the new sun-times owners have rather historic alleged ties to the chicago outfit.

the alleged mob ties were great news 'cause, well, who doesn't miss the sopranos + it's unlikely they'll just run it into the ground as amateur bandits black & radler did ... if history is any guide, when these guys invest in legitimate businesses, they make money - think interstate trucking.

news of the CNC's formation is great 'cause, although unlikely, they might actually have the spine to delve into it someday, 'cause one week after the investors names were finally released, no one who actually gets paid to cover this city seems much interested.

that said, miner did give flynn a graph & the trib gave the parrillo bros. five, but that's about it.

nope, it's going to take pro bono efforts like this to put some legs on the story:

http://www.hydeparkmedia.com/Alderman_Parr…

still, given the choice of working w/ the new sun-times or CNC, must say, what was allegedly good enough for the kennedy bros. & the CIA is certainly good enough for me, but being half sicilian/half napalidon (as was tony soprano), there might be a genetic bias here.

So the all-white, all but one-male Chicago Tribune alumni club will start a "news and commentary service" to be overseen by an all-white, largely suburban board chaired by Peter Osnos, a former Washington journalist and entrepreneur who has a summer house in Michigan, that includes Ann Marie Lipinski, the vice-president for public affairs (excuse me, "civic engagement") of a major object of news coverage, The University of Chicago, and another member, Newton Minow, who helped to break up the Field family holdings and sell the Sun-Times to Rupert Murdoch and, later, to force WFMT into selling Chicago magazine to some people from Detroit. Marquee commentator Jim Warren will write a column.

No younger people (except a board member who owns a website service company with his father), no Blacks, no Latins, no one from the Sun-Times, no investigative reporters, no one from the Reader, no one who doesn't already know everybody else from other boards or service in the Tower.

Money from their friends at the MacArthur Foundation. A contract with The New York Times (which is just giving away its editorial control, it seems). And free legal advice and perhaps office space at some point from Winston & Strawn, Jim Thompson's law firm and the one that offered "free" legal representation to George Ryan.

As a colleague put it to me earlier today, "So this is the future of journalism . . . . "

Kind of ironic that the guy who began the slashing at the Tribune by getting rid of City News a few years back is now...starting another City News-like operation? Quite a "brainchild"... these newspaper folks just keep coming up with better and better ideas, huh?