Hot Type, for the week of July 6, 2001 -- continued What about "Ed Gold"? "There's a very old and honored credo in journalism that it's easier to apologize than to get permission," Steinberg said. "I seized on the Ed Gold persona just because I was a nonentity reporter and I was afraid that if I was seen doing it the powers that be at the Sun-Times wouldn't let me. As time went by it seemed to me a Swiftian thing." Steinberg had no qualms about taking Greene on "because I felt and feel that Bob Greene is outside the pale of humanity. I'm not trying to put myself out as some sort of paragon of virtue. I've done my share of scuzzy, sleazy things, and writing Art Petacque's column was one of them." But Bobwatch "was a ruthless and malicious piece of work I was immensely proud of. My general take on journalism is that it's mild and fearful and dishonest. People are so terrorized they might get three letters of complaint from grandmothers in Cicero that they hold themselves in and turn out stuff that's terribly dull. "My wife hated Bobwatch. She imagined Bob Greene lying facedown on his bed, weeping into his pillow. I knew better." Steinberg poses an interesting question. Why don't journalists, those implacable enemies of illusion, dish up the hard truths of a life when it ends? The best answer I can come up with is probably a lame one -- it's that a lot of the time journalists don't feel like it. Out of grace or gutlessness, those hard truths often don't look to them like the important truths. Steinberg wonders why the hard truths told in the new biography by Dick Ciccone weren't raised when Mike Royko died four years ago. What can I say? Royko the SOB wasn't the Royko the city was mourning back then, and even Ciccone's biography pulls its punches. Royko with no tears at all might have to await a cocky young academic who didn't know him and never read him in the papers. Three days after Steinberg's column on Petacque came out, Greene wrote one of his own. Having started out at the Sun-Times, Greene, like Steinberg, had once collaborated with Petacque -- though this was the Petacque with a Pulitzer still in his future, not many years behind him. "He didn't write," Greene remembered. "I don't mean that he seldom wrote; he never wrote. I don't think the idea of writing ever even crossed his mind. He would gather his savvy law-and-lawlessness information and feed it to rewritemen; sometimes he would pace the city room handing off details on three stories at once, to three different writers." Greene wrote about a time in 1973 when Petacque convinced him there was a hell of a story up in Milwaukee. If he made the rounds of the city's fire stations he'd find the one that had adopted Hitler's dog. Greene's column was funny, and it was uncomplicated by moral anguish. When he wants to, Greene can brood with the best of them, but it didn't occur to him to do so at Petacque's expense. But then, Greene doesn't remember Petacque doing anything that raised eyebrows. Between 1973 and 1989 Petacque may have changed. Or maybe he didn't change but journalism changed around him. At any rate, Greene remembered a colorful old pro in his prime, Steinberg a colorful old fart who'd outlived his time. Even if Petacque's relatives were beside themselves, "every other person thought it was great," Steinberg told me. "People shook my hand in the newsroom." Less Talk, Less Action Network Chicago is a brand name coined by Window to the World Communications Inc. a year ago to impose unity on diversity. It's branded a TV station, WTTW; a radio station, WFMT; a Web site, www.networkchicago.com; a production house, Network Chicago Events; and finally, a weekly newspaper, CityTalk, that binds everything else together. Launched last November for WTTW and WFMT subscribers but more than a program guide, CityTalk was created to sink its teeth into the cultural life of Chicago. It hit the ground running, attracting good writers from the get-go by offering them the formidable freelance rate of a dollar a word. But three things have happened. Thanks to the freelance rate, CityTalk's expenses have exceeded projections; thanks to an industrywide ad slump, its revenues have fallen short of them; and thanks to a readership survey, it now knows that there's nothing its subscribers wait a week to enjoy that they wouldn't be willing to wait two weeks to enjoy. So as of July 20, CityTalk will become a biweekly, redesigned somewhat and printed on glossier stock. Freelancers will have to beat on another door; the new CityTalk will be written entirely by the staff, which at the moment consists of one writer, Kate Zambreno, associate editors Mary Swanton and Tom Valeo, and Dave Wieczorek, newly promoted to acting managing editor. Editor Bob Gallagher was let go two weeks ago. Publisher Parke Richeson says that if CityTalk is thriving when it turns three in 2003, it might go weekly again. News Bite • Next, the Sun-Times's sassy Sunday supplement, is taking the summer off. The June 24 issue was the last we'll see of it for a while, though editor in chief Michael Cooke says a retooled Next, still edited by Christine Ledbetter, will return later in the year. Next was rolled out last November, and despite some sprightly writing, it has attracted next to no advertising. "I don't understand it," says Cooke. "Maybe we launched it at the wrong time." Probably. The newspaper industry's been complaining all year long of soft ad sales. Send tips, tirades, and comments to hottype@chicagoreader.com Copyright © 2001 Chicago Reader, Inc. All rights reserved.