Whoa. Something Like Progress?

The Tribune actually covered a sexual assault on the South Side yesterday. We're sure it's not related to our frequent criticism of the Tribune for seeming interested in that crime only when it occurs in an affluent neighborhood -- mostly Wrigleyville -- and involves a minority suspect -- mostly African American. We're sure our criticism did not motivate this story. That would be taking ourselves too seriously. The Tribune doesn't care about us and is pretty sure we don't exist, even though our server statistics do show that many of our most loyal readers sit in front of computers connected to tribune.com servers.

Those are probably just attorneys.

The story about a sexual assault near 74th and State does not seem to have merited front page status at chicagotribune.com like the Wrigleyville crimes, and it's only four paragraphs long, but hey, it's a story. Turns out women in minority neighborhoods do matter, unless this is a hegemonic gesture. We hope the story contributes to an arrest and conviction.


Another Razzie for Rick

The Oscar for Worst Defense of Tribune Ownership of the Cubs goes to Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey for this remark, in his Nov. 22 column: "Trust me, if the financially strapped Sun-Times owned the Cubs, the team would be down to three outfielders, a pitcher and someone in charge of making sure Barack Obama had good seats."

It's a moot point, as they say, since the Sun-Times was journalistically-responsible enough to not buy the Cubs. But if the Sun-Times had made that mistake, we also think they'd run the team better than the Tribune has. And not because the Sun-Times is "The Bright One." Just because even a monkey could outperform the Tribune. The year after a White Sox championship, the Cubs finish in last place? No one could humiliate their fans better.

Is Tribune Hyping Its Own Sale?

We've seen a flurry of Tribune stories this week covering rumors that the Cubs or the Tribune Corporation itself may be sold. How shall we interpret this curious behavior? Any Cubs fan will warn you that the Tribune likes to get your hopes up just to dash them later, but we think something else might be afoot.

In three "news" stories on the topic of a possible Cubs sale, the Tribune values the Cubs at $600 million. The figure apparently comes from an otherwise unreported analysis by Goldman Sachs. But Forbes valued the Cubs this year at $450 million. The $150 million difference is not just nickels and dimes. It raises some questions. Why the big difference? And why do Tribune reporters quote the highest valuation instead of quoting the range?

This is what's insidious about newspapers covering their own inappropriate assets: as Tribune shareholders, Tribune reporters are in a position to receive a nice dividend if Tribune sells the Cubs. So naturally, it's in their personal financial interest to inflate the price. The Tribune covers the sale, its coverage influences the terms of the sale, and it is a party to the sale. Notice the point at which reporting, advertising, and marketing begin to merge.

One caution: we do not mean to suggest that the Tribune is in possession of inside information about a pending Cubs sale. Tribune reporters seem just as clueless about what happens inside their Tower as they are about what happens outside their Tower. This week we witnessed a particularly pathetic moment in American journalism: Tribune columnist Phil Rogers covering the New York Times coverage of the Soriano deal. Rogers wrote:

"Murray Chass, a New York Times reporter often honored for his role as a watchdog of the business side of baseball, wrote that the Soriano signing gives credibility to reports that Tribune Co. is going to sell the team it has owned since 1981."

How's that for a journalistic indicator? A Tribune reporter turning to the New York Times to describe what's happening in his own building. It's part of the shame of Chicago journalism that the Times often does a better job on Chicago stories.

But let's get back to those "news" stories about the sale of the Cubs. In one particularly strange one, Tribune reporter Susan Chandler defends corporate ownership of baseball teams. She writes, "Although some teams fared worse than others, franchises with complete or partial corporate ownership won more games than they lost. Their winning percentage: a respectable .507, which means they played better than their opposition over time."

The most loaded clause in those messy sentences: "some teams fared worse than others." As Cubune Watcher Keith Makenas points out, under Tribune ownership, the Cubs have a .481 winning percentage. You had to hear that statistic from Keith the Cubune watcher because Susan the Tribune reporter neglected to include it in her story.

Instead, Susan glosses this whole icky business about winning and turns to Cubs attendance as a measure of Tribune success. Just as patriotism is the last resort of scoundrels, attendance is the last resort of losers. We ask yet again: is it really good for the Tribune to pack Wrigley Field every year, only to frustrate and disappoint those in attendance?

What we're witnessing in the Tribune right now is an annual offseason rite of hyping the Cubs, not only inflating the team's value, but getting the Wrigleyville masses in a lather for Spring. "Happy Days, Indeed" was actually a Tribune headline this week.

Tribune: King of Advertorial

The Tribune has been crowning a lot of kings lately. RedEye declared comedian Jack Black the "King of Rock," as if to say, "We're so hip, we know who Jack Black is." Interest in Jack Black is a feature of the Tribune's dream demographic, its chosen people, the young white professionals who tend to spend their discretionary income in Wrigleyville. Jack Black may not be the King of Rock, but he is a star of advertorial, that blend of advertising, marketing, and news (typified by RedEye) that the Tribune is trying to spead across America like the butter on its bread.

Meanwhile, Tribune sports columnist Mike Downey declared new Cub Alphonso Soriano the "New King of Chicago" before Soriano even had a chance to don his new toothpaste-blue uniform. As if to celebrate the crowning, the Tribune left a grinning image of Soriano on top of its online Sports page for nearly a week. The caption read "Images in the News." Apparently, for an entire week there was no news more significant than Alphonso Soriano's smile. Alphonso Soriano may not be the New King of Chicago, but he does seem to be the New King of the Tribune. Or is he just another star of advertorial, a smiling image where reporting, marketing, and advertising merge to separate Cubs fans from their money?

Another Wrigleyville Assault

Sadly, yet another community alert about yet another Wrigleyville rape appears on the front page of the online Tribune today. (This time the Tribune calls the neighborhood "Lakeview" and again omits the proximity of the event to Wrigley Field -- seven blocks). We applaud the Tribune for alerting women to the presence of a rapist in their neighborhood; we just ask why it never performs the same service for women on the South Side. The Tribune only seems to publish community alerts when a minority suspect commits an assault in a predominantly white neighborhood. It couldn't be, could it, that the Tribune knows sexual assault, like Jack Black, is of particular interest to its dream demographic, its chosen people, those young professionals who tend to spend their discretionary income in Wrigleyville? We hope not. We really hope crime reporting hasn't become advertorial too.

And why does the Tribune only mention the proximity of crimes to ballparks when those crimes occur near U.S. Cellular?

Those "Storied" Cubs

Tribune reporter Susan Chandler writes today about groups trying to buy the Cubs from Tribune: "Tribune Co. hasn't said whether the Chicago Cubs are for sale, but that isn't stopping local businessmen from putting together groups to bid for the storied North Side franchise."

This is precisely the sort of occasion in which Tribune journalists subtly build a profitable mystique around the Cubs. If you call the Cubs "storied" but do not apply that adjective to any other team, then the Cubs acquire another increment of mystique, which plays quite happily into the marketing strategy that makes so much money for Tribune. Yet we can hardly quibble with the adjective itself. Storied is exactly what the Cubs are. The vital question is, who storied them?

We were recently contacted by a graduate student who is studying the Cubune bias. We warned him it might be difficult to document the bias numerically, since so much of it slips into print in the form of attitudes, assumptions, and adjectives like storied. But perhaps we spoke too soon. Lately we've been having fun with the Tribune archive and the amazing statistics it can produce.

For example, during the White Sox championship season, a season in which they held first place from opening day until the last game of the World Series, how many stories did the Tribune publish that mention the Sox, and how many did it publish that mention the Cubs? It's a fair question with an unfair answer. During the 2005 regular season, roughly April 1- Oct. 1, the Tribune published almost 800 more stories that mention the Cubs:

2005 Season
Cubs: 2,824 Tribune stories
White Sox: 2,047 Tribune stories

Okay, what about 2006? In 2006 the White Sox were baseball's reigning champions, and they remained in contention until the final week of the season. The Cubs, meanwhile, slipped securely into last place. Last place. But during the 2006 regular season, the Tribune published almost 600 more stories that mention the Cubs:

2006 Season
Cubs: 2,556 Tribune stories
White Sox: 1,975 Tribune stories

More people watched the White Sox on television in 2006. Numerous polls showed the White Sox to be equal or superior to the Cubs in popularity in 2006. Yet the Tribune wrote much more about the Cubs, and much of what it wrote described the Cubs as more popular, more lovable, or bigger. I think that's called lying. But, as you can see, the Cubs truly are more "storied."

But this is not just about steering fans toward a certain team. It's also about steering fans, tourists, and other spectators toward a certain Tribune-owned stadium. During the entire period described above, a period during which the White Sox won a World Series Championship and fought ably to defend it, the Tribune published almost 400 more stories that mention Wrigley:

April 2005-October 2006
Wrigley Field: 1,835 Tribune stories
U.S. Cellular Field: 1,442 Tribune stories

Don't take our word for it. You can do these searches of the Tribune archive yourself. And then, we ask, what more proof do we need?

Sosa: Tribune's Frankenstein

Two days ago we revealed a startling statistic: a search of the Chicago Tribune archive shows that since Oct. 1, the Tribune has published 35 stories with references to Sammy Sosa, but only one story with a reference to Derek Lee, an actual, current, legitimate Cubs superstar whose life, lately, has been no less dramatic than Sosa's.

Yesterday, as if to explain this bizarre fact, Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey wrote, "What we're seeing is a major public-relations push by His Samminess to get people to forget all the messy details of his past."

If so, Sosa's public-relations push has a full partner in the Tribune. Among those 35 Sosa stories, we find Paul Sullivan absurdly holding Sosa up as an example to which Albert Pujols should aspire. And we have an entire series of stories by company-man Fred Mitchell covering Sosa's birthday party in the Dominican Republic. A public relations push indeed. Where does the public relations push by Sosa end and the public-relations push by the Tribune begin? It's not so clear.

If Sosa is orchestrating a public-relations push, only the Tribune seems to have fallen into its grip. During the same period, the Sun-Times published only two stories mentioning Sosa. The Daily Herald, only five. (We note that Comcast Sportsnet just broadcast a special about Sosa. We further note that Comcast Sportsnet is partly owned by Tribune).

So what is going on here? We've often criticized the Tribune for failing to investigate alleged steroid use by Sosa with even a smidgen of the vigor with which two San Francisco Chronicle reporters have investigated Barry Bonds. The truth is, the Tribune can't investigate Sosa without investigating itself.

Remember, the Tribune built this monster. The Tribune loosed it upon our village. Tribune hired Sosa. The Tribune turned him into a legend. Tribune gave Sosa more than $100 million that it collected from the pockets of Chicagoans. It was under Tribune's tutelage that Sosa blossomed from a skinny, mediocre outfielder to an inflated, records-chasing superstar, only to shrink back to a skinny, mediocre outfielder as soon as MLB began testing for steroids. When testing began, it was Tribune that paid $7 million to the Orioles to hustle Sosa out of town. Recently, former Sosa teammate Turk Wendell had this to say: "Everybody in Chicago knew what was going on, just like everybody in baseball knows about Bonds. The coaches knew. So did the managers and owners. How could they not know?"

So did the owners, huh? Just who inside the Tribune Tower knew what was going on? We can be certain the Tribune won't tell us. So ask yourself: how would a marketing empire like Tribune handle a public-relations disaster of Sosa-like proportions? How about a major public-relations push to resurrect the man and his reputation? (Apparently they've never seen "Son of Frankenstein.") If Tribune can rebuild Sosa, return him to baseball, show that he can perform in the post-steroids era, it not only reduces pressure on Sosa's legacy, it also reduces pressure on the Tribune to tell the truth.

Yet another reason a newspaper company should not own a baseball team.

Anytime is Cubstime at the Tribune

Cubune watcher Keith Makenas offers this numerical assessment of the number of stories per team in the Sunday Tribune:

Hawks - 0
Bulls - 1
White Sox - 1
Bears - 4
Cubs - 5

Gosh. You'd think it was baseball season. But it's always Cubs season inside the Tribune Tower. The imbalance looks even more garish when you consider that the Bulls earned their sole story through an 89-80 comeback victory over the Pacers, the unflattering White Sox story was about a player implicated in a shooting, and the Bears managed to fall short of the Cubs on a game day during the most promising season we've had in two decades.

Stranger still, the Cubs coverage included two pages devoted to Sammy Sosa. As if that wasn't enough, on Monday, Tribune columnist Fred Mitchell followed up with a column about Sosa's star-studded birthday party in... where? We're not sure. Mitchell doesn't say. Somewhere on a beach. The Dominican Republic, perhaps, since the headline refers to Sosa's "native land." Did Fred Mitchell actually go to the Dominican Republic to attend Sosa's birthday party? That might help to explain the shortage of stories about Chicago's other sports franchises. More importantly, what is behind the Tribune's strange obsession with this washed-up goofball? (Sosa, I mean: There are 35 references to Sosa in the Tribune archive since Oct. 1, but only one reference to current, legitimate Cubs superstar Derek Lee). Did they all fall in love with him during the Friday employee potlucks in the Tribune Tower lunchroom?

Sosa, meanwhile, is offering, as proof of his integrity, the fact that no Chicago reporters have written a book about his alleged steroid use, referring, of course, to the book two San Francisco Chronicle reporters wrote about Barry Bonds. Sosa's defense depends on the assumption that investigative reporters in the Tribune Tower are just as aggressive as investigative reporters in San Francisco. We're pretty sure that's not the case, since the Tribune is still writing valentines to Sosa long after the guy bailed on his team, left town, shrank, lost his talent, and quit baseball.

There is one thing you can say about Tribune reporters, though: they're good team players. They stick by their Cubbie brethren.

Shadows Cast by Verdi's Sunny Outlook

Bob Verdi writes a decent Sunday column this week defending Tribune ownership of the Cubs. It's well written, self-deprecating (perhaps excessively so), and more fair and thoughtful than most of the affluent effluent that flows downhill toward the city from the Tribune Tower. But it makes some fundamental mistakes of thinking that we cannot ignore:

1. The column is written strictly for Cubs fans, from a Cubs fan's perspective. It assumes that the only reason to object to Tribune ownership of the Cubs is that the Cubs lose. It fails to register a much more serious reason to object: A corporation that controls most of the media in this town, or any of the media in this town, should not also own that which it covers. Tribune ownership of the Cubs has damaged Chicago journalism and damaged Chicago baseball. It has complicated Tribune neglect of the South Side of the city, it has embittered the rivalry between the two teams and the two fan-cultures they represent, it has caused at least half of Chicago to feel voiceless, shouted down, smothered. It has caused us to lose faith in our media, to lose faith in voices like Verdi's. This has been an Us vs. Them story for a century, and our newspaper chose sides. It chose Them.

2. Verdi's column assumes that it's good to fill the stands even if you lose: "Three generations [of Wrigleys] treated their baseball team like a library—open and close the doors on schedule. If people wanted in, fine. If not, that was fine too.... Marketing the product, such as it was, didn't exist." But marketing the product, such as it is now, is roughly equivalent to lying. Tribune manipulates Cubs fans into thinking they have a winner, then gives them, year after year, a loser. That's not a criminal act for a baseball owner, but it is a criminal act for a newspaper. There's something quite refreshing about libraries: no one cons you into entering one. That's called free and informed choice.

3. Verdi's column ignores the weirdness of its own position: a Tribune employee defending Tribune management of a team when that management style puts money directly in that employee's pocket. Verdi, like other Tribune employees, is a part owner of the Cubs through Tribune's benefit package. Verdi, like other Tribune employees, generates interest in the Cubs when he assumes, for example, that everyone in Chicago is a Cubs fan, or when he assumes that it's good to fill the stands at Wrigley even if you field a lousy team. "Since when," Verdi asks, "is it a felony to have a budget or a misdemeanor to seek a profit?" It certainly is not a misdemeanor for a baseball-team owner to seek profit from a baseball team. However, it is a violation of the trust between reporters and readers for a newspaper or a journalist to profit from coverage of a baseball team. Take another look at that Code of Ethics.

How Would They Cover Custer's Last Stand?

The Tribune fires the LA Times editor who stood up against the Tribune's campaign to gut the Times, the journalism community nationwide decries the act as an assault on editorial quality, and the Chicago Tribune covers the incident as a mere promotion for a couple of Tribune employees.

The story by Phil Rosenthal and Michael Oneal (Why does it take two Tribune reporters to do a worse job than one reporter could do at any other newspaper?) omits the biggest issue in the firing: the Tribune Corporation's business model of valuing financial concerns above journalistic concerns. The story fails to mention the speech that precipitated Dean Baquet's forced resignation, a speech in which Baquet urged America's newspaper editors to resist corporate efforts to diminish newsroom quality. The story mentions the takeover bid by two California billionaires, but fails to include the widely discussed explanation that they're making the bid to save the LA Times from Tribune mismanagement. And in the place of this real news, the story includes apologetic clauses designed to make the Tribune seem normal in the media world and to make its machinations appear as mere economic necessities:

Indeed, this is hair-pulling time in media circles. Tribune Co., which owns both the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, is under pressure from investors to boost its laggard share price and has been entertaining interest from private-equity investors.

Oh really, this is all just about share price? Only at the Tribune.

Such (cost-cutting) orders have become increasingly common among traditional media companies struggling with shrinking audience and revenue amid competition from the Internet and new technologies.

Ah, traditional media companies. The truth is, media companies have been struggling for decades, but it's the Tribune in particular that has become known for valuing profit above editorial quality and for treating journalism as mere "content" for sale, the stuff between the ads. Rosenthal and Oneal demonstrate again that at the Tribune, the stuff between the ads may be less trustworthy than the ads themselves.

Rosenthal and Oneal recount a heartwarming incident that makes us wonder what's in the Kool-Aid in the Tribune Tower. They describe Chicago Tribune employees offering a "lengthy ovation" to James O'Shea, the Tribune agent who is being sent to Los Angeles to replace Baquet. O'Shea's Tribune colleagues presented him with plastic armor and a toy shield, as if to say, "Go forth boldly and destroy the LA Times." Wake up Tribune. O'Shea isn't Odysseus. He's the Cyclops.

March of the Undead

News that Tribune fired rebellious LA Times editor Dean Baquet broke on election day, an assassination that appears timed so the controversy would vanish under the flood of election news. That's just the sort of media manipulation reporters dislike.

This is like yet another sequel to "Night of the Living Dead," in which creatures who march dumbly across the surface of the nation, creatures who look like journalists -- indeed, creatures who once were journalists -- are really zombies who eat journalists.

And the real journalists who are being eaten by Tribune increasingly don't like seeing their arms and legs ripped off and swallowed:

Many in the newspaper business ... reacted with surprise and disgust at what they saw as a strike against journalistic excellence in favor of bottom line finances. With reports revealing that Baquet apparently lost his job after refusing to implement potential future reductions sought by Tribune Co., and new publisher David Hiller, colleagues and others in the newspaper business contend the situation was a slap in the face to editorial quality. (Editor & Publisher)

Some billionares from LA lauched a bid today to buy Tribune and rescue the Times. Please boys, while you're at it, don't forget about Chicago. Imagine a Chicago with diverse media, without collusion between print and broadcast, without collusion between reporting and marketing. Imagine a Chicago in which someone like, say, Ernie Banks owns the Cubs. (Banks tried to buy the Cubs from Tribune last year). Who could object to that?

We'd like to see the empire busted up. Newspapers carved away from television and radio stations, and Cubs firmly separated from any media. Something must be done. The Tribune is not just out of touch with Chicago, not just out of touch with America, it's out of touch with what it means to be a good newspaper.

What's Love Got to Do With It?

The Tribune generates revenue from the Cubs by using both its marketing and its reporting media to generate a mystique that defies the reality of the team and its stadium. If they can get people to believe the mystique, the reality is no longer an obstacle to profit. For example, as long as Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin describes Wrigley Field as "a sacred garden," and as long as Tribune media repeat that notion again and again, it becomes possible to fill Wrigley Field regardless of the fact that the tickets are overpriced, the food sucks, the stadium is ugly and crumbling, and you can't see all of the field from many of the seats. But people still fill Wrigley. Mystique beats reality.

Another example of this Tribune strategy is the wobbly notion of "lovability." Take a look:

WGN's advertising jingle for Cubs' baseball is titled "Everybody Loves the Cubs!" It's quite clearly a lie, since half of Chicago despises the Cubs, but that's what marketing does, it creates profitable deceptions. The profitable deception of lovability begins to take the shape of an advertising campaign when we notice that the WGN jingle connects to the Cubs' popular nickname: the lovable losers. The strategy is clear: if they can get Chicagoans to believe that everybody loves the team because it loses, they no longer need victories to fill their stadium or their bank account.

Who created the nickname "lovable losers"? It hardly matters. The Tribune has taken it up in a big way. The phrase "lovable losers" appears 289 times in the Tribune newspaper archive. It's safe to assume the phrase is repeated as often on WGN and all of the empire's other television, radio, newspaper, magazine, and internet properties.

So a deception created by Tribune marketing gets repeated in Tribune reporting, driving the message into the community. Then when reality rears its ugly head, when actual threats appear to the Tribune's financial dominance, marketing and reporting alike fall back on those carefully manufactured deceptions.

For example, in August a study of sports-franchise popularity showed the Cubs and White Sox in a virtual tie in Chicago. The difference between the two teams was "statistically insignificant," meaning that the margin of error in the poll was larger than any difference between the two teams. A statistical dead heat can only be reported as a tie, as any competent journalist knows, but when the Tribune reported on the poll, Tribune reporter David Haugh's lede included this statement: "the Cubs can still lay claim to being the most lovable baseball team in town."

Ah, there's lovability again. What's love got to do with it? Faced with actual statistical evidence that counteracts its financial interests, the Tribune reports the marketing lie instead.

Excellent, ethical newspapers maintain as sturdy a wall as possible between reporting and marketing. At Tribune, there is no wall.


P.S. Just to underscore the depths of the Tribune's deception, subsequent polls have shown the White Sox firmly winning the popularity contest in Chicago, including television ratings demonstrating that more Chicagoans tuned in to see the White Sox than the Cubs on WGN. So "everybody loves the Cubs on WGN" except for the majority of WGN baseball viewers, who prefer the White Sox. And the Tribune ignored a Sports Illustrated poll showing that baseball fans vastly prefer U.S. Cellular Field to Blair Kamin's sacred garden.

Sully Bashes Cubs Fans... for St. Louis Paper

Paul Sullivan does his best writing when he's not under the thumb. Just check out these delectibles from a column he offered to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Now that the Cardinals have had their parade, it's time for Cubs fans to come to grips with the fact that rooting for their heroes with the knowledge that they will never win is a disease, like alcoholism, and the afflicted parties must understand they are suffering from a serious problem.

Most Cubs fans live in a perpetual state of denial, refusing to pay attention to historical trends, such as a 98-year championship drought and empirical data that proves once and for all the Cubs will never win a World Series championship in their lifetime.

Most of these people, coincidentally, still watch "Matlock."

Sullivan, the Tribune's Cubs beat reporter (last time we checked), has had quite a year, from being called on the carpet by Cubs executives for not toeing the Cubune line to giving Cubs fans a list of reasons to keep the faith. Now that he's out of town he's letting it all hang out. You can read more of Sully's finest work here. Thanks to Cubune Watcher Brian Dykes, aka Hawkeye, for spotting this gem.

Tribune Notices Proximity of Wrigley to Rape Scene

One day after we criticized the Tribune for only noting the proximity of crimes to ballparks when those crimes occur on the South Side, their story about the capture of a suspect in a Wrigleyville rape includes this disclosure: "the attack ... occurred about 3 a.m. Saturday in the 3500 block of North Wilton Avenue, about two blocks from Wrigley Field."

Baby steps, Tribune. It's a baby step forward, a baby step toward equality. We still think you should also cover rapes that happen in other neighborhoods, too, as well as rapes that victimize women of other economic and racial categories.