"Don't Call it the Cubune. Call it the Sleazune"

That's what one sleazune watcher wrote to us, protesting a story, video, illustration, and poll splashed all over the front of the Chicago Tribune's online edition this morning devoted to Careerbuilder.com's decision to change its advertising strategy.

What's wrong with this picture? What's really, really wrong with this picture? Tribune owns Careerbuilder.com, of course.

And Careerbuilder's decision is hardly newsworthy. In a decent newspaper it might merit a two-paragraph blurb in the back of the business section. But Mary Ellen Podmolik's 1,000-word front-page story reads like an advertisement for Careerbuilder (In fact, if you click on the video link, you'll be watching an advertisement for Careerbuilder). Podmolik notes that the Tribune property has passed Monster.com as the most popular site exploiting unemployment and job angst. It cites some of those fishy Tribune statistics we've grown to love — unattributed numbers of unique visitors, no doubt retreived from Tribune's IT Dept. Or manufactured there, we can never be sure. It lovingly describes Careerbuilder features such as monk-e-mail and age-o-matic. And it raises expectations for the Superbowl Sunday debut of Careerbuilder's new advertising campaign. Oh, gosh, what will it be?! How will they ever top the Chimps?! This isn't news.

But the story does seem cleverly timed to demonstrate to potential Tribune buyers how easily the company can exploit one media asset to promote another. Nice, Sleazune. Very smooth. Y0u may put out a mediocre newspaper, but you make a damn fine snake-oil salesman.