By Steve Rhodes
Richard Jewell is dead.
And the media still doesn’t get it.
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Hilly Kristal is dead.
And the media still doesn’t get it.
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Fat Joe Scapini is dead.
And the media still doesn’t get it.
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“8 of 10 Americans Know About Blogs; Half Visit Regularly.”
And the media still doesn’t get it.
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The Tribune Company has closed bureaus in Johannesburg, Moscow, London, Beijing, Beirut and Islamabad. (Washington Monthly)
Guess who doesn’t get it?
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Florence Scala is dead.
And the mayor doesn’t get it.
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But Carol Marin does.
“Florence fought the Chicago Outfit in the early 1960s. And the politicians on their payroll. Not to mention big business and real estate interests that saw a huge payday in gentrifying her neighborhood. And the genteel boards of upstanding civic organizations who sympathized with powerbrokers more than ordinary citizens. In her view, they all sold out the melting pot of immigrants whose modest houses and hard lives filled the enclave that was her community by never once consulting them.”
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The poverty rate in Chicago is 21.2 percent.
One in five.
Everyone in a newsroom, take a look around. What if one in five of you lived in poverty? That’s the city you cover.
Get it?
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This guy gets it.
He’s your role model, folks.
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Sam Zell isn’t. He does not get it.
“After apparent Tribune Company owner-to-be Sam Zell visited the L.A. Times a week or so ago, Publisher-for-Now David Hiller sent a memo to the paper’s staff describing Zell as a ‘[h]igh energy straight-talking business owner’ who ‘[b]elieves Los Angeles Times is very important and “has a great future,”‘ Mickey Kaus reports.
“[Kausfiles] hears Zell was rather more critical than that. In his talk to the assembled staffers, he said he found the paper ‘pretty bland.’ He pissed on the business section. He ran down the importance of foreign coverage as opposed to local news. Asked whether front-page ads compromised the integrity of the paper, he called that idea a ‘crock of shit.'”
Because Sam Zell knows so much about newspapers and integrity.
“He made a big point of saying the paper had to print what readers wanted to read, not what LAT editors wanted them to read – an idea that’s pretty much in complete conflict with the existing DNA of the Times (which deemed L.A. mayor Hahn’s divorce while he was in office not worth discussing, and reported Lindsay Lohan’s arrest, after she mowed down some bushes in Beverly Hills, on page B3). All in all, Zell studded his spiel with bad omens for the paper’s entrenched twits.”
This is what happens when a vulture with no interest in journalism buys your newspaper. Wake up, Tribbies. You still don’t get it.
“P.S.: Whose account is more accurate – Hiller’s or mine? There’s an easy way to find out, since a video of Zell’s talk was posted on the Times’ internal network. Hiller could release it.”
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Whet Moser gets it, and I have to just tip my cap to him about the flair.
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Booze Line
“CTA Adds Service For Bears Games.”
Bar cars for players.
Beachwood Radio!
Vocalo.org has produced an abbreviated audio version of our Mystery Debate Theater.
We have a theme song!
Memory Hole
A faithful reader writes: “That Alzheimer’s story on Page 1 of the Sun-Times Tuesday would have been much more compelling if the Tribune hadn’t written about the same guy more than a year ago.”
Sure enough . . .
And here too . . .
Fond Farewell
“Shortly after Katrina hit, former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert declared that a lot of New Orleans could be ‘bulldozed.’ He was shot down by an outraged public and media,” Douglas Brinkley writes in the Washington Post. “Two years have shown that Hastert may have articulated what appears to have become the White House’s de facto policy.”
Honey, They Might Kill Our Kids
“This fall, CBS debuts a new reality series called Kid Nation, which is basically Survivor for kids. Parents had to sign a 22-page release absolving CBS and the producers of virtually any liability, including the death of their children.”
– Mouseprint
Casino Royale
The Illinois Black Book.
Hey, should the mayor be in there because of his association with the Duffs? I mean, could the city actually qualify for a casino as long as Daley is mayor?
The Vegas Black Book.
Not exactly DeNiro, is he?
Joey the Clown’s brother having a tough year too.
Yes, that Spilotro.
Sox Stopper
“Buehrle went off on this strange tangent, saying how the Oakland area creeps him out on the team bus ride from the hotel to ballpark; how the crowded streets and scarred neighborhoods make him feel uncomfortable. ‘I don’t want to start nuthin, I’m just a country boy, he said.”
Flight Maneuver
QT’s Internet Question of the Week:
“Have you ever noticed that the mission of the space shuttle is doing more repairs on the space shuttle?”
The Beachwood Tip Line: OMFUG too.
Posted on August 30, 2007