Chicago -
By Steve Rhodes
1. “I have a great idea that I plan to share with my readers at the proper time regarding the violence in and around Chicago Public Schools that has been all over the news,” Stella Foster writes this morning.
The proper time being:
A) After three more kids are killed
B) After I type up the rest of these press releases
C) Once I find out if the union conceded my job
Posted on October 8, 2009
By Steve Rhodes
Is youth violence really like a disease?
That’s what the Tribune would like you to believe. And the paper marshals all the usual evidence about brain development and interventions and the sort of thing that organizations like CeaseFire talk about too.
And maybe that’s something Arne Duncan and Eric Holder will discuss today while they are in town for their dog-and-pony show.
But here’s the funny thing about not only youth violence but crime on the whole: It’s inextricably linked with poverty.
As I wrote at NBCChicago.com earlier this morning, kids who attend New Trier aren’t killing each other.
Posted on October 7, 2009
By Steve Rhodes
Boy, the morning has really gotten away from me. No time to fill out the rest of the site the way I had expected to, so lots of goodies coming tomorrow and the rest of the week.
But our sports section continues its impressive roll.
“First and foremost and forevermore it must be noted that Bears special teams guru Dave Toub can coach a return,” Jim Coffman writes in SportsTuesday. “Can he ever!
“It is hard to imagine a team putting together a better game’s worth of kick-receiving than did the Bears Sunday. It was the difference, plain and simple, in a game that otherwise would have been very close, no matter how much the defense (led by a great performance by Brown, Ogunleye and Anderson) bounced back in the second half and no matter how many points the offense scored.”
Posted on October 6, 2009
By Steve Rhodes
The bid is over, but the madness remains.
1. “If the International Olympics Committee had given the 2016 games to Chicago, you can be sure Mayor Daley would accept a full share of the credit,” the Tribune’s Steve Chapman writes. “But when Chicago had lost, he was not eager to take responsibility. He said he wouldn’t do anything differently. And he put the blame somewhere else: on the news media. Journalists in Rio de Janeiro, he claimed, were fully behind their city’s bid, while the Chicago press was not.
“Oh, please. Both the Tribune and the Sun-Times endorsed the bid in their editorial pages. The local TV stations, in the coverage I saw, were positively boosterish. A few churlish pundits like myself disagreed. But I’d be surprised if anyone at the IOC cares what we think.
“True, the Chicago news media did treat the bid as a legitimate story deserving the same scrutiny as any other public endeavor, rather than serving as mindless shills for the cause. But that’s the role of honest news media. I haven’t been following the Brazilian press, but I suspect Daley hasn’t either. I strongly doubt that the support among journalists was as vocal and universal as he believes.
“His real model apparently comes from the Beijing Olympics, which the Chinese government was able to pursue without the inconvenience of a free and independent press. Democracy can be such a drag.”
Except Chapman is wrong about the mindless shills thing. Mindless shilling was at an all-time high.
Posted on October 5, 2009
By Natasha Julius
Why are we even here? It’s not like anything exciting ever happens in this boring little shit town anyway.
Market Update
Reaction was mixed this week as Dimples announced strong short-term earnings in an uncertain economy. While the public has clearly embraced the news, analysts warn Dimples’ rapid capacity expansion will have long-term impacts.
Posted on October 3, 2009
By Steve Rhodes
* “It’s fair to say that the bulk of the serious studies on the costs and benefits of the Olympics suggest that, in terms of direct benefits, they are unambiguous money losers,” says Mark Spiegel, vice president for economic research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
* “There has never been an Olympic Games that has made a profit,” says Robert Barney, director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario.
* “No reasonable person thinks that the direct benefits of hosting the Olympic Games or any other mega event cover the costs,” concludes Andrew Rose, an economist at the Haas School of Business at the University of California in Berkeley.
Posted on October 2, 2009
By Steve Rhodes
Welcome, Sochi!
You’re in the club.
*
Ed Sherman: “Traffic shouldn’t snarl Olympic fever.”
The only traffic we’re worried about is the congestion in our wallets from so many people digging in there at the same time.
*
Greg Hinz: “You know that electronic parking meter system we’ve been carping about in Chicago? Well, beautiful Copenhagen – which, despite its charming medieval center, overall is as sleek and modern and smoothly functioning as its furniture – has the same system in place. Right down the street from my hotel you pay at a box with plastic, just like in Chicago.”
Except theirs work.
Posted on October 1, 2009
By Steve Rhodes
A column today is iffy, but check back throughout the day, there’s still a lot of Olympic inanity to cover. Too much. It’s exhausting.
For example, I just saw a report that Michelle Obama plans to tell IOC members “how Chicago works.”
If only!
Posted on September 30, 2009
By Steve Rhodes
The madness continues.
*
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 7:48 AM
To: WLS-TV GeneralManager
Subject: Olympics
Name: Erika Enk
I am just wondering if Ben Bradley is getting paid by Mayor Daley and the 2016 Olympics Committee? He is one of their PR guys, right? Because he sure is acting like it.
The Olympics is not what every Chicagoan wants. I don’t. Many of the people I talk to don’t want it. Why are you speaking as if it is?
Maybe you can actually do some journalism here and have a bit of journalistic integrity and examine the real numbers and costs, the cons as well as the pros.
Either that, or call it what it really is and get Ben Bradley in a cheerleading costume and pompons with a picture of Da Mare on his chest.
Posted on September 29, 2009
By Steve Rhodes
If a journalist in town wants to make an argument in favor of hosting the Olympics, I’m all ears.
I’m sure there’s a good one out there somewhere.
It would be fun, for example.
But the facts are the facts.
And I’m tired of our esteemed media geniuses ignoring them.
Posted on September 28, 2009
