Venerable? No. But Verifiably Vilified

The Chicago Tribune's Jan. 18 coverage of the bidding for Tribune Company differed from everyone else's coverage in one obvious way — only the Tribune complimented itself:

The deadline for Tribune Co.'s four-month effort to find a buyer came and went Wednesday, producing few clear options and leaving the fate of the venerable Chicago media conglomerate still up for grabs.

Venerable? According to the Oxford American Dictionary, venerable means "respected, venerated, revered, honored, esteemed, hallowed, august, distinguished, eminent, great, grand." If you do say so yourselves. In fact, Tribune is being auctioned to the highest bidder because it is considered anything but venerable. It's been hated in Chicago, despised in Los Angeles, detested in Hartford, and told to get out of journalism by journalists. Vilified seems the more appropriate adjective. Let's try again:

The deadline for Tribune Co.'s four-month effort to find a buyer came and went Wednesday, producing few clear options and leaving the fate of the vilified Chicago media conglomerate still up for grabs.

There we go. The question is... do the writers of this story, Michael Oneal and Phil Rosenthal, really aspire to be ad copy writers when they grow up? or have they been drinking the kool-aid in the Tribune Tower water kooler so long that they actually believe themselves to be venerable? or are they just trying to boost the venerable Tribune stock they picked up in their venerable benefits package? or do they think they can actually fool readers by slipping the wrong adjective into their alphabet soup?

Since Rosenthal, who fancies himself a media columnist, didn't even cover the CJR story this month, and since the word "venerable" tries to efface that whole controversy, we're betting they're out to fool readers.