News Bites: Bleader, Chicago Reader

Wholesome entertainment

Michael Miner — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:49:33 -0600

The other day I had what I briefly thought was a pretty good idea.

I happened to turn on the TV and catch the last half hour or so of The Greatest Game Ever Played, which is a Disney movie about an underdog who prevailed.…

The right move

Steve Bogira — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:56:26 -0600

It takes a big newspaper to admit a colossal boner, but the New York Times was up to the task yesterday:

The Chess column last Sunday, about Justin Sarkar, a New York international master, gave an incorrect move in a recent game between Adam Hunt and Mr. Sarkar. Black’s eighth move was h6, not h4.

What a relief this was!…

Byline: Madame Butterfly

Michael Miner — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:00:00 -0600

What's a responsible newspaper to do when somebody writes for it who has so many conflicts of interest there's no way to keep track of them all?

The Tribune's solution is to add this declaimer at the end of Candace Jordan's weekly column:

"Freelance writer Candace Jordan is involved with many local organizations, including some whose events she covers."

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The Daily Illini in trouble

Michael Miner — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:58:47 -0600

There's a new normal in print journalism and college papers are not immune to it. I’ve just had a conversation with Lil Levant, publisher of the Daily Illini and general manager of Illini Media Company, the not-for-profit that controls the student-run newspaper and radio station (and other properties) at the University of Illinois.…

James O'Shea announces a halt

Michael Miner — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:49:00 -0600

James O'Shea, founder, editor, and CEO of the Chicago News Cooperative, announced Monday that CNC was suspending operations because of a lack of funds. This decision was reported over the weekend by the Reader.…

CNC shutting down

Michael Miner — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:02:00 -0600

UPDATE: For a more recent and fuller account of the closing of the Chicago News Cooperative, please follow this link.

The Chicago News Cooperative will cease operation February 26, founder James O'Shea told his staff Friday afternoon.…

Once upon a time in Chicago

Michael Miner — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:48:09 -0600

Andrew Jones had me with DoubleTake. DoubleTake was the sort of failure you’d rather have on your tombstone than almost any ten successes—it was an astonishingly handsome, beautifully photographed, and elegantly written magazine that Dr. Robert Coles founded at Duke University in 1995 and that died ten years later.…

The show's aged better than the write-up

Michael Miner — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:02:35 -0600

Show Boat first opened on Broadway in December 1927. The (unsigned) New York Times review began with this:

The worlds of Broadway and Park Avenue and their respective wives put on their best bibs and tuckers last night and converged at Mr. Ziegfeld’s handsome new playhouse on Sixth Avenue.…
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MSM failing to bring major advertisers online — Pew study

Michael Miner — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:20:23 -0600

Some troubling news for mainstream media trying to make a go of it on the Internet:

“Between 2011 and 2015, revenue from digital advertising in the United States is expected to grow by 40% and to overtake all other platforms by 2016.

“Yet how much of that growth will go to underwrite news remains in doubt and throws into question the financial future of journalism as audience continue to migrate online.…

Bill Mullen

Michael Miner — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:00:00 -0600

Journalists in the best newsrooms care for each other about as deeply as marines on patrol do, and from time to time they want to say so. As yeomen whose stock in trade is prose they regard it with some skepticism, and when special occasions arise they sometimes turn to a literary form better suited for camouflaging profound affection inside nonchalant wit.…

There was a little churl . . .

Michael Miner — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:00:00 -0600

What a fascinating fellow Newt Gingrich is. A couple of Sundays ago George Will cleared his throat to weigh in on him, and I hung on every word.

Substitute host Jake Tapper had interviewed Gingrich in the opening minutes of ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos.…

Alinsky and Terkel, talking

Michael Miner — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:18:45 -0600

Republicans from Newt Gingrich on down who have been trying to hang Saul Alinsky on Barack Obama are handicapped by their apparent failure to have any idea who it is they're talking about.

Alinsky was a community organizer born and raised in Chicago who worked closely with friends in high places in the Catholic Church.…

Do newspapers think we can't see who's missing?

Michael Miner — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:01:00 -0600

I gave the Monday Trib a stare
And met the man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish, I wish, he’d go away.

His absence haunts the Tribune, and a lot of other papers too.…

Hail, Hail, to Michigan!

Michael Miner — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:57:00 -0600

The Michigan primary was the last day of February. “I don’t want to have to actually campaign there,” the Front-runner told his marketing guy, who carried the title of Traditional Values Articulator.…

The Facebook paradox

Michael Miner — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:54:52 -0600

The Pew Research Center has put its finger on a Facebook paradox.

Some 20 to 30 percent of Facebook users are "power users," according to a study by the Pew's Internet & American Life Project, done in collaboration with Facebook.…

Mick Dumke wins Studs Terkel Award

Michael Miner — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:18:00 -0600

The Reader's Mick Dumke is a 2012 winner of the Studs Terkel Community Media Award, which is given by the Community Media Workshop, based at Columbia College. Dumke was named Thursday, along with Maria Hinojosa of National Public Radio and Chip Mitchell of WBEZ.…

The good old supernatural

Michael Miner — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:26:00 -0600

I came to work Tuesday and opened my computer to the Reader home page. Facing me on the screen was Anne Ford's as-told-to interview with Richard Kieckhefer, "historian of magic."…

Alinsky and Gingrich—separated at mirth? Alinsky's son speaks

Michael Miner — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:07:00 -0600

When Newt Gingrich fulminates, the name of Saul Alinsky springs easily to his lips. President Obama is, you know, a "Saul Alinsky radical."…

We have that guy right where he wants us

Michael Miner — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:58:00 -0600

The candidate had watched the president’s address with notepad and pencil at the ready. When the speech was over the candidates looked over his notes to review the bright ideas he’d written down.…

Watching in awe

Michael Miner — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:03:00 -0600

A Tina Hampton of Greenville, South Carolina, told the New York Times why in the end she voted for Newt Gingrich in her state’s primary. The reason was fidelity to values.…

We're the Tribune, and we endorse this endorsement

Michael Miner — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:48:00 -0600

On Monday the Sun-Times announced that it will no longer endorse candidates for public office. “Our goal,” said the editorial page, “is to inform and influence your thinking, not tell you what to do.”

My first reaction was to think, well of course, doing endorsements right is hard work and the Sun-Times doesn’t have the staff for it any longer.…

Caucus and bull story

Michael Miner — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:00:00 -0600

Sunday headline on the Tribune website: "For Mitt Romney, two losses in one day."

One was the South Carolina primary. But to make matters even worse, said the Tribune, "the Iowa Republican Party, after saying just days ago that the Jan. 3 caucuses were inconclusive, issued a statement overnight declaring that Rick Santorum had, indeed, won.…

The camera is running—you can start existing

Michael Miner — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:00:00 -0600

If a tree falls in a forest but it doesn't show up on YouTube, did the tree actually fall? Or should we ask, OK it fell but what was the point?

As pundits discuss the troubling behavior revealed in recent videos, they cannot help but wonder about the videos themselves: Why do they exist?

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Give it up for George Kennan

Michael Miner — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:00:00 -0600

There was an encounter. You were young, vital, full of ideas and enthusiasms.…

That's Professor Axelrod to you

Asher Klein — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:13:58 -0600

Not satisfied with lecturing Republicans on Sunday morning roundtables, David Axelrod has taken a position heading up a new Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, the school announced today. The Institute will train students to "study and participate in civic life in Chicago and around the nation," and Lynn Sweet reports that it'll be modeled after a similar program in Harvard's Kennedy School for government.…