Tribune Discovers Columbia Journalism Review

A front-page story in the Chicago Tribune today quotes the Columbia Journalism Review, a publication the Tribune has been pretending doesn't exist for about six months. Michael Oneal, who covers Tribune for the Tribune, quotes CJR executive editor Michael Hoyt in a front-page story announcing that the Tribune will start running ads on its front page. Hoyt, like most journalists, thinks that's a real bad idea.

But Hoyt couldn't get his name in the paper for the life of him six months ago, when CJR ran an editorial urging Tribune to get out of the newspaper business entirely because it "isn't doing much public good."

America's leading journal of journalism accused Chicago's largest media company of doing no public good, and not one word about it appeared in a Tribune publication.

What emerges in this little contradiction is a telling glimpse of Tribune ethics. If Tribune putting ads on the front page is newsworthy enough to quote Hoyt, then certainly Tribune doing no public good is NEWSWORTHY ENOUGH TO QUOTE HOYT.

Apparently there's an upper ceiling to newsworthiness, too. That last item was perhaps just a little too newsworthy for the tender eyes of Chicagoans. So your Tribune withheld it from you.