We Dare to Hope
Late this morning, the Tribune managed to fix the Alfonso Soriano caption underneath the Brian Uhrlacher photo, and our Soriano Watch went on standby. The Soriano Watch began as documentation of blatant corporate incest [The Tribune newspaper granting unwarranted prominence to a photo of a Tribune employee (Soriano), donning a Tribune logo (Cubs jersey), next to a Tribune executive (Jim Hendry) in a Tribune facility (Wrigley Field)] but it honestly had become something of a joke as the bungling Tribune awoke to its own corruption and complacency. A joke, that is, unless you're a Chicagoan who wishes our city had a good newspaper.
The Soriano moment speaks to feeblemindedness -- at best -- at the Tribune that one cannot really imagine in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. In fact, lots of American cities much smaller than Chicago enjoy much higher levels of journalistic excellence and integrity. Why, we ask, is bias and bungling so easy to imagine in Chicago journalism? And why do we tolerate it?
Why do readers of the Los Angeles Times respond with such alarm to Tribune mismanagement of their hometown newspaper that they actually band together and find billions of dollars -- billions -- to save the LA Times from Tribune? Why can we not imagine Chicago readers rallying around "our" Tribune? Because we have no sense that it is ours. The Tribune is an Us and Them paper, with one party sequestered inside its Gothic tower, and the rest of us on the outside. Can we imagine Chicago readers becoming alarmed that the Tribune might become mediocre? No, because mediocrity is what we already have. Mediocrity is what we've always had. Nelson Algren wrote about the mediocre Tribune 50 years ago, and half a century has only made things worse.
Chicagoans are so complacent to poor journalism in their morning daily that Tribune executives actually believed they could export their mediocrity as a winning formula -- compromise journalistic excellence, integrity, and ethics; spread a homogenized message across divergent media; blur the distinctions between news, advertising, and marketing; sell it all as so much content. The formula was grandfathered into Chicago, but when Tribune took its formula out to the rest of America, out where people know what journalism ought to smell like, they made the blunder that may destroy Tribune itself.
Los Angeles is experiencing some rays of hope as prominent Angelenos such as Eli Broad, Ron Burkle, and the Chandler family work to wrest the LA Times from the Tribune, even if it means demolishing Tribune in the process.
We dare to hope as well. We don't just hope for a newspaper that covers the White Sox fairly with the Cubs, we hope for a newspaper that covers all of Chicago, instead of fostering a culture of chosen people in Wrigleyville and treating everything south of Roosevelt as so much alien and surplus population. We hope for a newspaper that cares for the South Side, for the West Side, and for all this city's shadows. For "the nameless useless nobodies who sleep behind the taverns, who sleep beneath the El." We hope for journalists who actually read and adhere to our profession's Code of Ethics, who avoid conflict of interest at all costs, and who disclose their conflict of interest when they absolutely cannot avoid it. We hope for editors who value journalistic principle above financial advantage. We hope for television, radio, magazine, cable and internet voices independent from the Tribune's megalomaniacal monovocality, journalistic voices free to pursue and express their own perspectives on this diverse and dynamic city.
We dare to hope, but because we are White Sox fans, we temper our hope with a realism as cold as the black ice lurking under the white snow outside. Even if those better angels out of Los Angeles manage to dissect the cancerous Tribune, it seems likely that in Chicago, where we're used to monopolistic media mediocrity, where we've gown accustomed to a feeble press, and where some guy in a suit can always make a buck off of dubious alliances that predate anti-trust legislation, we'll still be stuck with the same bias and bungling that we've always been stuck with.
Why did Nelson Algren write Chicago: City on the Make half a century ago? He tells us: "It was written out of an awareness that multitudes live among us who share the horrors but not the marvels of our split-level bedlam. As well as from a natural resentment toward a press whose complacency could not be dented. For no man can make a dent in emptiness."
The Soriano moment speaks to feeblemindedness -- at best -- at the Tribune that one cannot really imagine in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. In fact, lots of American cities much smaller than Chicago enjoy much higher levels of journalistic excellence and integrity. Why, we ask, is bias and bungling so easy to imagine in Chicago journalism? And why do we tolerate it?
Why do readers of the Los Angeles Times respond with such alarm to Tribune mismanagement of their hometown newspaper that they actually band together and find billions of dollars -- billions -- to save the LA Times from Tribune? Why can we not imagine Chicago readers rallying around "our" Tribune? Because we have no sense that it is ours. The Tribune is an Us and Them paper, with one party sequestered inside its Gothic tower, and the rest of us on the outside. Can we imagine Chicago readers becoming alarmed that the Tribune might become mediocre? No, because mediocrity is what we already have. Mediocrity is what we've always had. Nelson Algren wrote about the mediocre Tribune 50 years ago, and half a century has only made things worse.
Chicagoans are so complacent to poor journalism in their morning daily that Tribune executives actually believed they could export their mediocrity as a winning formula -- compromise journalistic excellence, integrity, and ethics; spread a homogenized message across divergent media; blur the distinctions between news, advertising, and marketing; sell it all as so much content. The formula was grandfathered into Chicago, but when Tribune took its formula out to the rest of America, out where people know what journalism ought to smell like, they made the blunder that may destroy Tribune itself.
Los Angeles is experiencing some rays of hope as prominent Angelenos such as Eli Broad, Ron Burkle, and the Chandler family work to wrest the LA Times from the Tribune, even if it means demolishing Tribune in the process.
We dare to hope as well. We don't just hope for a newspaper that covers the White Sox fairly with the Cubs, we hope for a newspaper that covers all of Chicago, instead of fostering a culture of chosen people in Wrigleyville and treating everything south of Roosevelt as so much alien and surplus population. We hope for a newspaper that cares for the South Side, for the West Side, and for all this city's shadows. For "the nameless useless nobodies who sleep behind the taverns, who sleep beneath the El." We hope for journalists who actually read and adhere to our profession's Code of Ethics, who avoid conflict of interest at all costs, and who disclose their conflict of interest when they absolutely cannot avoid it. We hope for editors who value journalistic principle above financial advantage. We hope for television, radio, magazine, cable and internet voices independent from the Tribune's megalomaniacal monovocality, journalistic voices free to pursue and express their own perspectives on this diverse and dynamic city.
We dare to hope, but because we are White Sox fans, we temper our hope with a realism as cold as the black ice lurking under the white snow outside. Even if those better angels out of Los Angeles manage to dissect the cancerous Tribune, it seems likely that in Chicago, where we're used to monopolistic media mediocrity, where we've gown accustomed to a feeble press, and where some guy in a suit can always make a buck off of dubious alliances that predate anti-trust legislation, we'll still be stuck with the same bias and bungling that we've always been stuck with.
Why did Nelson Algren write Chicago: City on the Make half a century ago? He tells us: "It was written out of an awareness that multitudes live among us who share the horrors but not the marvels of our split-level bedlam. As well as from a natural resentment toward a press whose complacency could not be dented. For no man can make a dent in emptiness."
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