Chicago Magazine: Hustling the Tourists

In early September, Chicago Magazine Visitors, a slick publication targetting tourists, appears at tourist destinations all over the city. Like an old-time Chicago hustler leading a corn-fed square into a back alley in the First Ward, it includes two features that push tourists to spend money on the Cubs ("Three Days, Three Ways", and "Game Plan"), but neither disclose that Chicago Magazine and the Cubs are both owned by the same corporation.

It seems to me that tourists who love baseball might have preferred to see a team with a winning record, like the team on the South Side, the Chicago White Sox. The Sox were in first place all season. This was the magazine's fall 2005 issue, and unlike the Cubs, the White Sox were still playing in the fall. The magazine does mention the White Sox' park, but only as a place to pass by on the way to the Blues Museum.

It gets worse. In "Game Plan," the magazine advises tourists who can't get Cubs tickets to watch the Cubs at home, but only after going to the Tribune Store to buy a Cubs cap. They're actually steering tourists to their own corporate office to drop money into their own corporate pockets. Seems to me this puts Chicago Magazine in cahoots with the hustlers on the El who con unwary tourists with the shell game. It's obviously unethical, but you know what? Let the reader beware....