Sun-Times Stirs From Long Slumber

The Chicago Sun-Times, which should have been doing what we do here for the last 25 years, just noticed Tribune ownership of the Cubs and decided to investigate:

"The people have suffered enough. That's why this case will be tried in these pages over the coming days and weeks. We will present the case for the prosecution and the case for the defense, and then the Court of Public Opinion will render a verdict."

If the Sun-Times really does wake up, will it wake up with or without a spine? That's what we want to know. Usually when the Sun-Times causes a stir, some self-important snot at the Tribune just calls the Sun-Times "the junior paper" or "the smaller paper," and the Sun-Times hides simpering under the bed again. Oh look, it's already begun. From the Tribune's Steve Rosenbloom: "Sounds like the smaller newspaper is pitching a fit over what the bigger newspaper wrote." Steve thinks he's pretty great, working for the "bigger" newspaper.

So the Sun-Times is going to prosecute the case in the court of public opinion, and then let the public decide. But it sounds like both parties have already made up their minds. The Sun-Times, in the same story that announced the "trial": "The Sun-Times wants the team sold -- immediately." And Public Opinion, expressed in a Sun-Times poll beside that story:

POLL RESULTS :: Do you think the Cubs need new ownership?
Yes 82% 2043 votes
No 17% 422 votes

So why do we need the trial? Just to lend legitimacy to the hanging? We'll be watching how well the Sun-Times prosecutes its case. The paper says it will examine how the Tribune-Cubs partnership hurt the Cubs, but will it also examine how the Tribune-Cubs partnership has hurt the White Sox, alienated Chicagoans from their media and from one another, and damaged journalism in Chicago? We suspect the Bright One, which has been quietly complicit for the last quarter century, might find that potato a little too hot.