Chicago -
By Steve Rhodes
House Speaker and Illinois congressman Dennis Hastert (R-Yorkville) got the “I’m Deeply Sorry” headlines he wanted today – at least in the Tribune and the Sun-Times, though the story was different elsewhere, as we shall see – though anyone who saw him give his brief, prepared statement yesterday could see that he was far more sorry that his job was in jeopardy than he was about his role in the congressional page scandal.
Posted on October 6, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
1. The biggest story in the country is a congressional sex scandal that is closing in on U.S. Speaker of the House and Illinois Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Yorkville), and the Sun-Times is MIA. What in the world is going on over there?
Posted on October 5, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
This is just sad to watch.
The immediate decline of the Sun-Times under the return of Michael Cooke to the editorship is not only embarrassing, but effective in doing what its competitor finds so hard to do for itself: Making the Tribune look like a damn good newspaper.
Posted on October 3, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
Someone resigned in disgrace over the weekend, and his story made the front page of the Sun-Times. The fact that it wasn’t Andy MacPhail is just the latest indictment of the return of Michael Cooke to the editorship of the paper.
While the Sun-Times gave over its cover to the “Sex Scandal In Congress” in which Rep. Mark Foley – of Florida – resigned on Friday, it had nary a mention – none, zippo – of the surprise resignation/firing of Cubs president Andy MacPhail.
The Foley story is important – especially in that it may implicate Republican congressional leadership including hometown Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert in a cover-up just weeks before the midterm elections – but it’s a story with legs. We’ll be hearing a lot about it as it unfolds. The big stories in Chicago today are the Bears win – if only because it was so convincing – and MacPhail’s departure.
Cooke apparently doesn’t know the difference between a sex story and a sexy story.
The Cubs are sexy. Congress is not.
Posted on October 2, 2006
By Natasha Julius
Your weekly chronicle of global lying, spying and detainee flying.
What’s Dunn is Dunn
The House of Representatives this week took aim at the corporate practice of “pretexting,” stating unequivocally that such behavior is completely unacceptable for anyone who isn’t the President of the United States.
Posted on September 29, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
If today’s front-page account in The New York Times is any indication, Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial, is a blockbuster. Among the revelations as reported by the Times:
* “The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there.”
* “As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: ‘I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.'”
* “Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld . . . [was] so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls.”
Posted on September 29, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
The mayor’s announcement yesterday that the Chicago Children’s Museum will move from its Navy Pier location to the corner of Monroe and Columbus is played rather sedately in the papers today compared to the sparks the plan has ignited among lakefront park advocates and other civic-minded urban observers, as evidenced on Chicago Tonight last night.
The protestations of Grant Park Advisory Council President Bob O’Neill received much stronger airing on CT‘s panel than what was represented on newsprint. And prominent local architect and WBEZ-FM contributor Edward Keegan (as identified from the WTTW website; I missed the introductions) downright blasted the mayor for his typical piecemeal, sloppy, contradictory approach to public planning that belies the media image of a manager with great vision when lack of vision has been a hallmark of his administration.
“We cannot plan [the new museum] the way we planned Millennium Park,” Keegan roughly said (as best as I scrambled to get down his remarks). “Millennium Park was a happy confluence of events. If we let it fall together the way some things we’re hearing about, then we have the potential for great trouble.”
More to the point, Keegan asked, “Where is the plan?”
Posted on September 28, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
1. Michael Cooke is back as editor-in-chief of the Sun-Times (more on that in time) and has told staffers he wants more “attitude” in the paper. It’s cheaper than more reporting.
2. “It’s a joke. It’s written on a 9th-grade level.”
That’s a union guy talking about the firefighers exam in a Sun-Times story written on the 6th-grade level.
3. “After months of controversy, the world’s largest retailer opens its first Chicago store today, and those who work there say they couldn’t be happier,” Shamus Toomey writes in the Sun-Times – where else? – this morning.
Wal-Mart hasn’t traditionally advertised much in newspapers, but the Sun-Times is trying really, really hard to get its business. They discounted this story to the 4th-grade level.
(Is this what Cooke means by “attitude”?)
Posted on September 27, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
1. “The discovery that a bizarre particle travels between the real world of matter and the spooky realm of antimatter 3 trillion times a second may open the door to a new era of physics,” the Tribune reports.
Further, Fermilab researchers making the discovery found that the particle zooming in and out of the real world is lodged in President’s Bush’s brain.
2. I wonder what poor (and gutless) reporter was forced into writing up the Sun-Times page 5 news story titled “7 Reasons To Try SunTimes.com.” (Reason No. 2: There’s a search function!)
3. There were no opposing voices in that story, by the way.
Posted on September 26, 2006
