Chicago Reader: The Blog: News Bites

Still More on the Mezuzah

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:29:55 -0600

Only hard-core courts buffs are sticking with me on this, my third post on the subject of the Seventh Circuit's en banc mezuzah ruling. But if you're hanging in, I recommend the oral arguments.

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More Chicago in the New York Times, Courtesy of Reader Executives

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:52:07 -0600

As a New York Times subscriber, I received the following email:

"Your edition of The New York Times is about to get local. Every Friday & Sunday.

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Bloch v. Frischholz — It's Not Just About a Mezuzah

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:47:57 -0600

The other day I called the Seventh Circuit's reversal in Bloch v. Frischholz, a lawsuit involving a mezuzah hung in a hallway against the wishes of the condo association, a victory for Appellate Judge Diane Wood. It might be much more than that.

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About the Thomson Prison Debate

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:15:07 -0600

I join Neil Steinberg in condemning Congressman Mark Kirk for the letter Kirk sent President Obama urging him to put those "200 Al Qaeda terrorists" somewhere else, for if they're transferred from Guantanamo Bay to the state prison in Thomson, Illinois, "our state and the Chicago Metropolitan Area will become ground zero for Jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization."

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Long-Awaited Broadcast Museum State Grant Almost, But Not Quite, A Done Deal

mail@chicagoreader.com (Deanna Isaacs) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:18:01 -0600

Persistence may yet pay off for beleaguered Museum of Broadcast Communications head Bruce Dumont: he says both houses of the state legislature have approved a $6 million Capital Development Fund grant that'll permit construction to resume on MBC's State Street building (at Kinzie).

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Patrick Tuite Settles, but the Terms Are None of Our Business

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:06:32 -0600

The Reader received the other day a nearly blank sheet of paper passing itself off as a press release. At the top of the sheet PRESS RELEASE had been typed, and beneath that heading this message:

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Reader owner Creative Loafing has a new CEO

mail@chicagoreader.com (Alison True) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:34:00 -0600

Michael Bogdan, of Atalaya Capital Management, which recently acquired the Reader's parent company, Creative Loafing, in a bankruptcy auction has announced the appointment of a new CEO.

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The Mezuzah Case — A Victory for Judge Diane Wood

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:35:24 -0600

If federal judges are like the rest of us they have their good days and bad days, the assignments they really set their minds to and the ones where you wonder if while they were putting in their eight hours they also had a game of computer Scrabble going.

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Grounds to Rehear the Jamie Kalven Petition?

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:32:53 -0600

In rejecting Jamie Kalven's petition for a list of 662 Chicago police officers with tainted records, a panel of three federal appellate judges said Kalven lacked standing to intervene in the case for which the list was prepared. And one big reason he lacked standing, said the judges, is that the plaintiff in that case expressed no support for Kalven's petition.

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The Seventh Circuit Rules Against Jamie Kalven

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:31:34 -0600

Two years ago federal judge Joan Lefkow lifted a protective order that kept hidden a list of so-called rogue cops — police officers who over the previous five years had had ten or more beefs filed against them. But the public has yet to see that list, and a panel of three appellate judges just saw to it that the day we will won’t come any time soon.

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Alvarez v. Medill

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:25:59 -0600

The state's attorney's office presented its case Tuesday for getting lots more information out of Medill about the investigation by that school's Innocence Project into a 1978 murder of a security guard in Harvey. But if getting to the bottom of the long-past murder is what's uppermost in the office's mind, that's hard to make out from its 54-page filing.

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Chicago Public Radio—an internal report on its new Strategic Plan

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:23:12 -0600

Chicago Public Radio has a new strategic plan (pdf), a tightly held internal document approved by its board on October 30 after lots of discussion. One of the first orders of business has CPR changing its name to Chicago Public Media—“a more accurate depiction of what we already do, certainly the only fair depiction of what we intend to do over the planning period,” which is 2010—2013.

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Lynda Barry, Matt Groening, Chris Ware, and Jules Feiffer in a discussion Saturday at Parker

mail@chicagoreader.com (Jerome Ludwig) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:29:55 -0600

Chris Ware Self-Portrait

Longtime pals Matt Groening and Lynda Barry participated in a Chicago Humanities Festival event at UIC, which CHF marketing and communications associate director Jara Kern says drew the largest single festival turnout ever.

I don't know if the auditorium at Parker can hold that kind of turnout, but tomorrow the two will return for a CHF panel discussion moderated by the Reader's Michael Miner.

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Is This the Future of Chicago Journalism?

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:22:44 -0600

The Chicago Community Trust is scattering half a million dollars in seed money to support 12 innovative local journalism projects. It's a new program, Community News Matters, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation ($250,000) and the John D. and Catherine T.MacArthur Foundation ($100,000) as well as CCT; spokesperson Vivian Vahlberg says satisfying all 86 grant applications would have required $5.7 million. "The amazing thing is there were so few dogs among the proposals," she tells me. "So many good ones, so many interesting ones."

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Death Speaks — And There's No Agent Getting 10 Percent

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:21:18 -0600

When artists imagine the dead, the undead, and the deadly, they are usually trying to terrify us. Zombies, ghouls, chainsaw murderers — our first reaction to any of these fiends is to run the other way.

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Tribune Company Ending Pretense Its Employees Own It

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:57:31 -0600

The bankrupt Tribune Company is dropping the fiction that since Sam Zell took over it's been owned by the employees being laid off by the carload. The Wednesday Tribune carries a short, poignant story that says bluntly the "ill-fated employee stock ownership plan is dead."

Here is the same article as it appeared in the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Company paper where the Tower is despised. This version of the story drips with contempt.

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How Much Do Those Freeloading Seniors Really Cost Us?

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:20:40 -0600

"The region's bus and rail systems are providing an average of 3.1 million free rides a month at a cost of at least $49 million a year." — Chicago Tribune, October 30.

"The least the three transit agencies [the CTA, Metra, and Pace] wanted last week was a lifting of the free rides for senior citizens, a move that would have saved them up to $37 million." — Chicago Tribune, November 1.

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David Greising Goes Future Hunting

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:22:00 -0500

Ask me if Jim O'Shea's Chicago News Cooperative has a chance to succeed and I'll say yes — not because the concept is mesmerizing but because David Greising did his due diligence and then decided to sign on.

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Steve Timble Leaves Reader

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:42:31 -0500

The appointment of Jim Warren as publisher of the Reader has made the position of associate publisher redundant, in the view of the Reader's owners, and Steve Timble, who held that position and has been acting as publisher, has left the paper. Given the economy, what we all know about the state of print journalism, and the Reader's recent history as part of a chain of weeklies that just came out of bankruptcy, this paper's in fairly decent shape: ad sales goals are in reach, with classifieds showing surprising strength, and the return rate of distributed copies is minuscule. This is progress, it happened on Timble's watch, and I thank him and wish him well.

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The Reader’s New Publisher Is an Edit Guy

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:01:00 -0500

Jim Warren

Jim Warren, a former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, was named publisher of the Reader today, in an announcement by Richard Gilbert, interim CEO of the board now running the chain of six Creative Loafing weeklies.

“He’s all the things you look for,” says Gilbert. “He has integrity, courage, enterprise, intelligence.” He says the appointment sends a message, both within the Reader and to the city, that “this newspaper continues to be very serious about its journalism and its content.”

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James Warren Is the Chicago Reader's New Publisher

mail@chicagoreader.com (Alison True) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:51:00 -0500

Richard Gilbert, interim CEO of Creative Loafing, the company that owns the Reader, has announced that the open position of publisher has been filled by James Warren.

UPDATE: Michael Miner's first post on the subject.

Here's Gilbert's statement:

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Jim Tyree Takes Control of the Sun-Times Chain

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:00:14 -0500

The five dozen newspaper titles and Web sites that constituted the Sun-Times Media Group left bankruptcy under new ownership Monday afternoon. For about $26.5 million, most of it necessary to cover old debts, financier Jim Tyree and his fellow investors took control of what's now Sun-Times Media Holdings, LLC.

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If the Shoe Fits Michael Jordan's Son Marcus . . .

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:58:00 -0500

The Tribune’s David Haugh tried to do the impossible Saturday. He wrote a column invoking the old-fashioned values to explain why Marcus Jordan needs to knuckle under and wear Adidas sneakers on the basketball court of the University of Central Florida. Basketball, Haugh reminds us, is a “team sport based on unselfishness and sacrifice.” Jordan is challenging the “oldest rule in sports. What the coach says goes for everybody every time.” Haugh is bewildered. “How can the son of the man widely considered the best player ever in a team sport defy such a fundamental team concept?”

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Printers Settle With Tyree

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:40:30 -0500

Jim Tyree has now lined up every last duck. Tyree wanted a guarantee of labor peace before he and his investment group would buy the Sun-Times Media Group, and on Friday the last of the unions, Chicago Typographical Union Local 16, six printers strong, agreed to terms.

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Who Benefits?

mail@chicagoreader.com (Michael Miner) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:30:10 -0500

Andrew Patner asks the question, and in the original Latin, in his energetic blog post on the new Chicago News Cooperative that Jim O'Shea announced today.

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