Chicago -
By Steve Rhodes
The Tribune is pretty generous today with its top-of-front-page headline “City Aims To Stop Rogue Cops.”
More like “City Aims To Stop Exposure Of Rogue Cops.”
Mayor Daley taking control of the machinery investigating complaints about police officers – as if he hasn’t already been in control – is a fox-in-the-henhouse story for the ages.
Posted on July 20, 2007
By Steve Rhodes
Wow, what a day for Mayor Daley.
First – at least I think this happened first, I can’t be sure of the chronology – former aldermonsters Arenda Troutman and Shirley Coleman crashed the ribbon-cutting the mayor was presiding over for the new, $254 million Kennedy-King College.
And Troutman and Coleman managed to come out of it as the sympathetic characters.
By all accounts, Troutman and Coleman worked their tails off for the college. “It was their unyielding demands of Daley that produced record levels of minority participation on the project,” Fran Spielman reports in the Sun-Times.
Yet, there was Daley taking the credit.
“‘It can be done,’ Daley said of the minority participation in remarks delivered before Coleman and Troutman invaded the stage,” the Tribune account says. “‘Remember that. It can be done on every project, public or private.’
Posted on July 19, 2007
By Steve Rhodes
“Outfit hit man Nicholas Calabrese on Tuesday implicated a close friend of Mayor Daley’s, Fred Barbara, as taking part in the bombing of a suburban restaurant in the early 1980s,” the Sun-Times reports.
“Its not the first time Barbara has been accused of having ties to the Chicago mob,” the paper notes.
“Barbara was arrested in 1982 with three reputed mobsters, including his cousin, Frank ‘Tootsie Babe’ Caruso, in an extortion sting set up by the FBI. A federal jury acquitted Barbara and the others.
“In a court filing in that case, prosecutors said Barbara was ‘believed to be a major participant’ in the illegal gambling operation run by [Angelo ‘The Hook’] LaPietra. Barbara is a nephew of the late Ald. Fred Roti, who has been identified as a made member of the Chicago mob.
“Barbara has made millions of dollars through the years in trucking and real-estate deals with the city of Chicago.”
Posted on July 18, 2007
By Steve Rhodes
Front page ads are coming to Tribune Company newspapers.
It’s an abomination.
In a low-trust world in which the brand authority of mainstream media is eroding while the brand authority of new media is still evolving, this is exactly backwards.
Posted on July 17, 2007
By Steve Rhodes
Trying to catch up from National Bikini Journalism Week.
1. “President Vladimir V. Putin, angered by American plans to deploy a missile shield in Eastern Europe, formally notified NATO governments on Saturday that Russia will suspend its obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, a key cold war-era arms limitation agreement,” the New York Times reported on Sunday.
We’re deploying a missile shield over Eastern Europe? When did that happen? And what, Western Europe is chopped liver? Not to mention, um, us?
Boy, you start paying attention to local TV news and you miss a lot.
2. Challenging the thesis that Wrigley Field is part of God’s plan.
3. People are who they are. Conrad Black has been a cheat all his life.
Posted on July 16, 2007
By Natasha Julius
The Weekend Desk will only keep as much a watchful eye on developments in the Amy Jacobson saga over the next 48 hours as is necessary to provide you with everything you need to know about important parts of your world. Because, aside from that, we don’t feel too well.
Get well soon, America
We’re having surgery!
Posted on July 14, 2007
By Steve Rhodes
I’m out the door early this morning so just a few quick items.
1. It’s even worse than we thought – and it’s a pattern.
“WMAQ-Ch. 5 reporter Amy Jacobson was briefing police on her interaction with Craig Stebic without telling her bosses, which played a role in her ouster from the station, sources say,” the Tribune reports.
“Jacobson was taped last week in a swimsuit with her kids at the home of Stebic, the Plainfield man now classified by police as a person of interest in the disappearance of his wife.
“Sources say that breach of company standards, which made her a part of a story she was covering and had been warned she was getting too close to, was just the latest incident over the past several years to cause bosses to lose their confidence in Jacobson’s judgment and cost the star reporter her job.*
Posted on July 13, 2007
By Steve Rhodes
When Geraldo Rivera and Mark Fuhrman are laughing at your loose ethical standards on Hannity & Colmes, as they were last night, you know you’re in trouble.
“A no-brainer,” Rivera said last night of the firing of Channel 5 news personality Amy Jacobson. “Absolutely pathetic. Not even a close call.”
Unless you’re Eric Zorn.
Posted on July 12, 2007
By Steve Rhodes
UPDATE 2: See Ray Hanania’s response below.
UPDATE 1: See Jacobson’s revealing comments below to Spike O’Dell on WGN-AM this morning.
*
I was on Chicago Tonight last night discussing the Amy Jacobson kerfuffle – I thought it was right that she lost her job for crossing what is an obvious ethical line to me and anyone who was paying attention in J101. I’d like to make several additional points and address the real issue that few want to talk about.
1. Getting the story isn’t everything. Taking your children to the home of a man still under police suspicion in the disappearance of his estranged wife is not a great idea – even if Craig Stebic is innocent. (Though police haven’t officially named Stebic as a suspect – they have all sorts of reasons for not doing so – he is indeed under suspicion, and in fact is refusing to speak to investigators. AP also reports that “Lisa Stebic had mailed off a petition seeking to remove her husband from the home. In the divorce case, she accused him of being ‘unnecessarily relentless, cruel, inconsiderate, domineering and verbally abusive.” Those allegations aren’t necessarily true, but they ought to be enough for a sensible reporter to keep the appropriate distance.)
“It was a way for me to do my work and have fun with my kids,” Jacobson told the Sun-Times‘s Robert Feder.
Oy.
2. What if police, acting upon evidence they had developed, showed up at the home with a search warrant, or to make an arrest, or had reason to surround the house with a SWAT team? You don’t put your kids in the middle of a live criminal investigation. At least not as a reporter. Friends and family can make their own determination.
3. Stebic is not allowing his kids to speak to police. But what if they speak to your kids while they are playing? You don’t put your kids in the middle of a live criminal investigation.
Posted on July 11, 2007
By Steve Rhodes
The latest from the Family Secrets trial:
“Calabrese Jr. went from collecting quarters at mob-controlled peep shows when he was a teenager to role-playing in planning scenarios set up by his father and uncle as they plotted out how to kill someone. Calabrese Jr. once retrieved his uncle’s murder weapon that had been thrown in a sewer, made easier since Calabrese Jr. ran a city sewer crew.”
* * *
The latest from the Kwik-E-Mart Affairs Desk:
“Turns out our Southwest Side Apu is Frenko Rahana – a diehard Simpsons fan.”
Now offering this pledge: “Every item guaranteed fresh or your money begrudgingly refunded.”
* * *
The latest from the Springfield Secrets Desk:
“Illinois Senate President Emil Jones has blocked legislation to put the names of state subcontractors on the Internet as his stepson’s technology firm continues to rake in millions of dollars in under-the -radar government business . . .
“Since January, the bill has languished in the Senate Rules Committee, which Jones controls.
“‘I have no problem with the public knowing everything,’ he said.”
Posted on July 10, 2007
