Wonder of Wonders, Wrigley's a Wonder!

In mid-September the Tribune published its ranking of "The Seven Wonders of Chicago." Of course, Tribune-owned Wrigley Field, the home of the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs, finished near the top in the Tribune poll, outwondered only by the Lakefront and even more wonderful than the third-place El. The project's overseer, Deputy Tempo Editor Lilah Lohr, assured us that Tribune readers determined Wrigley's placement with their votes, and that the ballot was randomly assembled anew for each voter. We'll take her word for that, even though Wrigley Field always turned up at or near the top of our ballot (and even though comments by readers making the same observation have vanished from the Tribune website, along with comments from other readers objecting to Wrigley's inclusion in a Tribune poll).

"As for the nominating process," Lohr said, "as the person who supervised and monitored most of it, I can personally vouch for the extremely high number of nominations Wrigley Field received from readers. That's how it got on the ballot in the first place -- nobody stacked the deck."

That's where we disagree. The deck is stacked to hell and back. The Tribune relentlessly promotes the Cubs and Wrigley Field, and Tribune readers are the primary target of all that promotion, so it's certainly no wonder that Wrigley performed well in a Tribune poll of its readers. It's akin to the federal government funding the campaign of one presidential candidate while all the others fend for themselves. We also have evidence that more Cubs fans than Sox fans visit the Tribune website, so any poll conducted there is obviously stacked. Furthermore, the Tribune's glorification of its own investment property is obviously unethical.

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....