WGN Joins Tribune Promotion of Careerbuilder

Tribune-owned WGN is now promoting Tribune-owned Careerbuilder's new advertising campaign as a news story, without disclosing that both WGN and Careerbuilder are owned by Tribune Company, a disclosure required by the ethics policies that you can read on the right-hand column of this page.

WGN's News at Noon covered Careerbuilder's new campaign today as a Super Bowl story, but did not cover any of the other companies that will advertise during the Super Bowl, except for a passing mention of Anheuser-Busch. The WGN story included an interview with an executive from Cramer-Krasselt, an advertising agency with a fat Tribune contract, and an executive from Careerbuilder — in other words, a Tribune executive. The reporter was WGN's Muriel Clair.

The unethical report was then rebroadcast on Tribune-owned CLTV.

The WGN story comes on the heels of a Chicago Tribune "news" package that misled readers by suggesting Careerbuilder is the leading job-search site. It's not. But the Tribune Company seems to be marshaling all of its journalistic resources to make the deception come true.

Tribune journalists routinely defend themselves from bias charges by claiming that the Tribune Company and each of its subsidiaries are completely separate and distinct. Does Tribune expect us to believe it's merely a coincidence that both the Chicago Tribune and WGN newsrooms are hyping Careerbuilder's new advertising campaign right before its Super Bowl debut?

Are we supposed to believe that both Tribune-owned newsrooms independently decided that Tribune-owned Careerbuilder is the only newsworthy Super Bowl advertiser?

On Ed Sherman's Coming Out Day

Tribune columnist Ed Sherman came out today as a Sox fan: "In the interest of full disclosure, and to blunt any accusations that I write for the Cubune, I am a lifelong, diehard Sox fan."

That was brave of Ed. It's like standing up in an AA meeting and shouting, "But I like beer." He's probably getting a lot of stares today at the office. From other Tribune employees in their cub-icles.

But Ed also came out for a political reason, because he was about to say something that he knew would have Sox fans all over his sorry hide. It was something, in fact, that no lifelong, diehard Sox fan would ever say, because it was something based on seeing the world through Cubune-colored glasses. Ed said, "I think there's only one story that could knock the '85 Bears from the top spot: the Cubs winning the World Series. Given their cult-like following, a Cubs title would be a local and national story of unimaginable magnitude."

Actually, no it won't. I mean, nationally it would be a big story for a couple days because the Tribune media have the national stage all set for the story — the century of suckage and curses and billy goats and all that nausea. But on the national screen, that ends in a day or two. Blip, it's over, what else is new? In Chicago, the Cubs' championship would also get a lot of play in media pre-programmed to give it a lot of play, but it will never be a bigger story than the Sox championship in 2005, and here's why:

If Ed really is a lifelong, diehard White Sox fan, then Ed knows, as we all do, that all those bloody noses and black eyes on the playgrounds of Chicago (and between Chicagoans on the playgrounds of America) for the last seven or eight decades were not just about which team was better, they were about a race – the race to end Chicago's World Series championship drought.

And that race is over.

No matter who won the fight on the playground that day, the real victor was the kid whose team won the World Series first. We all knew that, Sox fans and Cubs fans alike. And 2005 is a moment the Cubs can never replicate. Even if the Cubs win the World Series, they don't even tie the White Sox. They're just playing catch-up, and they would still be one championship behind.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there wouldn't be a huge celebration if the Cubs won a World Series. There would be an enormous, loud, drunken, stupid, and probably violent celebration, but that celebration would be a little forced. Some Cubs fans would be celebrating sincerely, but a lot of Cubs fans would be trying a little too hard because that's what they think they're supposed to do, and all would be endeavoring to fill an inexplicable inadequacy, for any celebration would be undercut by the inescapable fact of history that the White Sox did it first.

In the recordbooks of Chicago baseball history, no year will shine like 2005, not for at least another century. And I don't think the Cubs can ever match the beauty or enormity of what happened on October 28, 2005, an event the Tribune amazingly still has not registered, with 1.75 million Sox fans on the streets of Chicago, in the middle of a work day, people of all races, creeds, colors, and kinds, celebrating wildly and peacefully. There was only one arrest: a guy trying to steal one of the city's Sox banners off of a light pole. It was the largest public gathering in Chicago history, and the Tribune continues to play it down.

Even though Ed came out as a "lifelong, diehard White Sox fan," he might not realize that he's wearing the blinders that come with that paycheck. He might spend a little too much of his time with the Cubs fans in that tower, and that might skew his view of reality a little bit, not to mention his view of Chicago. Ed thinks a Cubs championship would be a big story because the Cubs have a "cult-like following," but they really don't have a cult-like following. Cults tend to be arcane and mystifying to the mainstream media, like White Sox fans. And cults tend to wear black.

There certainly are lifelong, diehard Cubs fans who are born into the Cubs tradition (a tragic fate) and who cling to it with the same ferocity that we follow our Sox. We've all met them. But anyone who knows Chicago knows that's not entirely who fills Wrigley Field 81 days a year, driving up ticket prices, and it's not who fills the bars of Wrigleyville, endowing them with the relentless charm of a frat party and the unmistakable perfume of vomited Old Style.

The Cubs' following is populated by a preponderance of corn-fed squares who migrate to Chicago from all over the Midwest, take jobs in the Loop, take apartments in Wrigleyville (or thereabouts), and don Cubs gear as the off-duty uniform of the stereotypical young upwardly mobile professional Chicagoan, as that stereotype has been portrayed in the media, thanks largely to the Tribune, but not entirely (See "My Boys").

They root for the Cubs because that's what they think they're supposed to do. Look, let's say you're at a Wrigleyville party. Why do you do that beer bong? Because you feel it in your bones like destiny or religion? No, you do that beer bong because everyone else at the party is doing the beer bong, and now they're all looking at you and shouting "woo, woo." The very same thing is true of the Cubs. Here's the plan: move to Chicago, get a good job, get an apartment off the Red or Brown line, go to the clubs, be a Cubs fan, go to Wrigley, that's the routine. When the routine's over, so is your devotion.

Those Cubs fans look diehard for the moment, because that's how they think they're supposed to look while having fun, but they temper their Cubbie sorrows with quiet allegiances to the Twins (Steve Rhodes), the Cardinals, the Reds, the Tigers.

That's not a cult following. That's a marketing success. And like all marketing successes, it lasts until the next marketing success. Remember the Sony Walkman? It appeared to have a cult-like following too, but now those people have iPods. Statistics showed quite a few members of the Cubs "cult" jumping on the White Sox bandwagon last season, scaring the Tribune enough to spend about $300 million this winter. With the Tribune in the Cubs' corner, the Sox may need a few more championships to be like the iPod, but that's just fine with us. Honestly, our cult-like following will outlast any marketing success for either team.

This is a brave new world, and Tribune reporters can't see it.

The Cubs will never top a 2005 championship that ended nine decades of drought for Chicago. See this trophy? You can't touch this.

How Tribune Manufactured Buehrle Controversy

When they're not fawning over new Cub Alfonso Soriano, Tribune sportswriters are busy making up controversies for the White Sox, and here, broken down, is the anatomy of a particularly pernicious one:

In a Jan. 11 story, Tribune reporter Dave van Dyck stated outright that the White Sox would not re-sign Mark Buehrle after the 2007 season. In van Dyck's words:

So it should not be surprising that Sox general manager Ken Williams will not try to re-sign the team's recognized pitching leader after giving him a chance for an extension last spring.
"With the market as it is, I don't anticipate making that overture again," Williams said recently.
In other words Buehrle's $9.5 million this year will be his last salary from the Sox, who should have younger (and cheaper) options by next season.

The problem with van Dyck's story was immediately evident to many of us -- that "in other words" sentence was not an accurate interpretation of Ken Williams' actual words. Anyone who follows Kenny's work knows he wouldn't say that. A lot of Sox fans, who maintain a better understanding of Kenny Williams and a healthy skepticism of the Tribune, noticed the problem with van Dyck's story right away. Cubune Watcher Brian Dykes started a thread at whitesoxinteractive.com, and Sox fans dissected the situation in detail. We now know they dissected it accurately. More accurately than Dave van Dyck or any of the local journalists who have since covered the story.

With van Dyck's inaccurate interpretation of Ken Williams still on the wind, Mark Buehrle comes to SoxFest and says, "Yeah, I saw the quote about him saying that I won't be in a White Sox uniform in 2008. That's part of the business. It's going to happen."

You see the problem: Kenny never said such a thing. A Tribune reporter said it. But now the Sun-Times and other local media, either oblivious or on bended knee to the Tribune, jump on the non-story, billing it as a fight between Ken Williams and Mark Buehrle. To quell the controversy, Williams apologizes to Buehrle. Now notice the precise wording of Kenny's apology, as quoted in the Tribune:

"I apologized because I should know better now than to answer direct questions with direct answers. I have to change the way that I'm doing this job.... In an effort to be truthful, honest, candid—it just doesn't work. On the surface, it would work if everything you said, every channel it went through after you said it, it would be interpreted the same way, in the same context. But that's not just the case. That's not just reality."

Kenny says he was misinterpreted, as Sox fans correctly surmised in their discussion of van Dyck's article. So he isn't apologizing for what he said, he's apologizing for trusting the people to whom he said it. He's realizing, again, that he has to be much more evasive with Chicago reporters, lest they pull a van Dyck and misinterpret and repackage a quote in a misleading way.

Here's what Buehrle had to say about it: "I told him there was no apology needed. It's something that some of the media people took differently and ran with it."

Now look at the cynical and insidious way the Tribune has played out a controversy that it created. First of all, the Williams-Buehrle story was the biggest story to come out of the first day of SoxFest, but the Tribune didn't cover it that day. Tribune reporter Mark Gonzales was too busy looking for evidence of another controversy that he tried, and failed, to manufacture. But how could the Tribune simply overlook this big Buehrle-Williams "battle," which made such a splash everywhere else? It was as if Tribune reporters knew, in their heart of hearts, that the story was false. What they needed was other media to pick up the story and give it currency. Thank you, Sun-Times, you're always on hand when the Tribune needs a gullible little brother to do its dirty work.

On Day Two the Tribune does start covering the controversy. Under the headline, "Who's Sorry Now? Williams," Gonzales pulls yet another "in other words" interpretation. Here it is, Gonzalez's convenient misinterpretation of Williams' apology:

In other words, Williams didn't back off what he had said—he was just sorry he had said it publicly.

Wrong again, Mark. He's sorry he said it to people like you. Gonzales somehow doesn't notice what Williams said about interpretation and context. Now Gonzales is running interference for van Dyck and the Tribune. Even though Dave van Dyck had explicitly written on Jan. 11 that this was Buehrle's last year, Gonzalez tries to trace the controversy to a Williams quote from Dec. 8: "It would be if we did nothing and got old and got too expensive and then had to go out scrounging for leftover talent and overpaying for mediocre talent."

Notice that Mark Buehrle's name appears nowhere in that statement. The quote is not nearly as explicit as van Dyck's story. Let's revise a little history, shall we, to whitewash the Tribune's culpability. In another story today, under the headline "Buehrle: no apology necessary" Gonzales tries to pin the inaccuracy of the media coverage on local radio.

We know better.

Clueless Sportswriters Sow Doubt

More proof that the Tribune is utterly clueless about the White Sox and their fans: In a story published Friday, Jan. 26, under the headline, "Williams Enters Lion's Den," Tribune sportswriter Mark Gonzales wrote, "General manager Ken Williams will bring much welcomed relief to douse the verbal flames directed at him Friday when sold-out SoxFest opens."

Lion's Den. Verbal Flames. A lot of Sox fans found those bold predictions perplexing, because Sox fans have been largely supportive of Williams' moves during this off-season. Gonzales was under the false impression that Sox fans had it out for Williams. But no lion's den materialized. No verbal flames either.

Here's Mark Gonzales 24 hours later, after SoxFest actually opened: "With the exception of a few catcalls, supporters politely asked general manager Ken Williams and manager Ozzie Guillen, who was wearing a blue No. 13 Bears jersey with his name on the back, about the Sox's trades and about their future during a question-and-answer session."

Not only was there no lion's den, there's some question whether there were any "catcalls," since no one but Mark Gonzales seemed to hear them, and he seems more invested in maintaining his feline-themed fantasy of fan discord than in accurately covering the team.

Unlike Tribune sportswriters, Sox fans seem to understand, by and large, the sense of investing in young pitching, as Williams is doing, and the folly of trying to buy a World Series, as the Tribune is trying to do for its precious Cubbies. But how would Tribune sportswriters know that? Sox fans are invisible to Tribune eyes, as the Tribune amply demonstrated when it failed to notice the 1.75 million Sox fans on the streets of Chicago on October 28, 2005. Tribune writers can only seem to get a handle on the Cubbie culture that's headquartered inside their tower. That's Chicago to them, and the rest of us — most Chicagoans, that is — are just alien and incomprehensible.

Also, these guys have no idea what a World Series championship does to cement the relationship between a team and its fans. Why do they have no idea? Because they can't see past the Cubs.

Meanwhile, across the newsroom, Rick Morrissey writes, "Let's Be Honest: Grossman is Far from Super QB." And under that headline? Paragraph after paragraph of observations of the obvious, thinly rationalized as criticism of other, too-positive media.

No one in Chicago needs to be reminded of Rex Grossman's inconsistency. It's been the biggest story of the season, often overshadowing coverage of this team's achievements. We've all lived through it, and we all felt it viscerally as recently as last Sunday. So why raise again the obvious doubts about Grossman one week before the Super Bowl? It seems that Morrissey just doesn't know what to do with his column, so he does what any Tribune writer does when in doubt: sow that doubt elsewhere and sow it where doubt is most harmful.

Tribune Misleads Readers About Careerbuilder

A few days ago we expressed skepticism of some unattributed statistics cited in a Chicago Tribune story about Tribune-owned Careerbuilder.com. We were right to be skeptical. The Jan. 19 story gives readers the impression that Careerbuilder has passed Monster.com as the leading job-search site, but that claim is simply false.

According to Alexa.com, which ranks websites based on internet traffic, Monster.com was the 298th most popular website over the past three months, while Careerbuilder was 373rd. Over the past week, Monster was ranked 286th, compared to Careerbuilder's 321st. And lest you think the Tribune property is catching up, it isn't: both sites saw their traffic drop about 20 percent over the past three months, probably because of the holidays.

So what was the Tribune story talking about? Mary Ellen Podmolik's story states that "CareerBuilder climb(ed) over Monster.com to become the largest online job site." Largeness, huh? Is that like bigness? What is largeness when it comes to websites? The number of pages? The amount of revenue? The number of visitors? Podmolik doesn't say. "Largest" is simply the word Careerbuilder uses in its advertising tagline, and the Tribune seems to have reprinted it as the lede of a news story. But it seems to us that the leading website is the one that attracts the most traffic.

Podmolik never mentions Monster's substantial advantage in traffic, even when citing Careerbuilder's traffic claims.

Later Podmolik cites another Careerbuilder claim that "it had passed archrival Monster in revenues," but Podmolik neither cites Monster's revenue nor gives Monster an opportunity to respond.

What we may be seeing, in fact, is a new push by Careerbuilder to try to pass Monster, using the Chicago Tribune, Mary Ellen Podmolik, and you, Chicago, as a big springboard of free advertising. Don't buy it.

The Blind Leading the Less Blind

James O'Shea, the Chicago Tribune scab sent to Los Angeles to serve as editor of the Times, announced his exciting new strategy for combating the Times' Tribunesque descent into mediocrity. What could it be? You're looking at it. The internet. According to a story in the Times:

Los Angeles Times Editor James E. O'Shea unveiled a major initiative Wednesday to combine operations of the newspaper and its Internet site — a change he said was crucial to ensuring that The Times remains a premier news outlet. O'Shea employed dire statistics on declining print advertising revenue to urge The Times' 940 journalists to throw off a "bunker mentality" and view latimes.com as the paper's primary vehicle for delivering news.

Everyone outside of Tribune seems to think the Times just needs to be liberated from Tribune, but inside the bunker James O'Shea thinks he can revitalize the Times by bringing it into the mid-1990s. Just one problem: the LA Times is way ahead of the paper where James O'Shea learned the ropes.

According to Alexa.com, the LA Times website is ranked 807th, which is pretty crappy. The New York Times, by contrast, is 109th. But the flagship of the Cubune Empire, the Chicago Tribune itself, is ranked 1,333rd. And falling. Rapidly.

Alexa also rates chicagotribune.com as "slow." 74 percent of websites are faster.

The LA Times following James O'Shea into the internet age is a bit like, I don't know, the Chicago Cubs putting Larry Rothschild in charge of their pitchers. Tribune has its own special logic doesn't it? The logic of losing.

Silence for Chicago's Dispossessed

Residents of the Back of the Yards neighborhood are angry at police for failing to publicize the sexual assault last Saturday, Jan. 20, of a 16-year-old girl on 48th Street. They're angry because a 12-year-old girl was assaulted in the same area three days later by a suspect of similar description. They wonder why no one warned them about the predator the first time he struck.

But the police are not the only body responsible for warning residents about crime in their neighborhoods. The press is responsible as well. And the press is better equipped than the police to do the job.

As we have documented many times, the Chicago Tribune publishes front-page alerts on its website for sexual assaults in Lakeview and Wrigleyville, often accompanied by a police sketch of the suspect and a video. It will engage in all sorts of contortionism to avoid mentioning Wrigley Field, even when the assaults have occurred as close as two blocks away, but still manages to prominently place stories that focus police and community attention on this crime when it occurs in those chosen neighborhoods. It rarely ever covers sexual assaults on the South Side or West Side, even sexual assaults of children, until cases reach the courts, which means a suspect has already been apprehended.

The Tribune will pick up the story if South Side rapes appear to be serial, which is what happened in this case. The Jan. 25 Tribune story about the second assault was full of criticism of police and the local alderman, but typically empty of self-critique. The Tribune's crime coverage routinely shows favoritism toward affluent neighborhoods and routinely fails those of us "others" who don't represent the ideal Tribune advertising demographic.

Tribune to Old and Poor: Get Lost

The mission statement for Redeye actually admits the paper is for young rich professionals. So if you're old or poor or working class, your eyes are unfit for their paper, apparently. Here is Redeye's official mission statement:

RedEye is Chicago's free daily newspaper that provides a concise and authentic take on news, sports, entertainment and social buzz. RedEye, an edition of the Chicago Tribune, has become the leading vehicle in Chicago for advertisers wanting to reach young, urban professionals who are short on time and long on disposable income.

This is a fine example of Tribune's celebrated "synergies" between advertising and editorial, which have been slammed by both the Columbia Journalism Review and the American Journalism Review for compromising journalistic integrity. No self-respecting journalist would write a mission statement that targets a specific advertising demographic, but then, Tribune journalism isn't really about self-respect, it's more about another kind of self-love. This kind:

The Joke's on You, Tribune

Last week's season premiere of American Idol helped us all feel superior by mocking mentally disabled, autistic, or obese people trying to sing while we all sat bravely in our armchairs. Redeye readers got to relive the thrill during next morning's commute with a back-page splash describing the performers as "a parade of oddballs" and featuring an enormous picture of performer Darwin Reedy.

Thanks for the recap, Tribune, but when we think of those who are deluded about their own talents while everyone else is appalled, it's hard not to think of Tribune itself.

At moments like this, it also becomes easy to imagine Rupert Murdoch, the broadcaster of American Idol, taking a chunk of Tribune. The "synergies" are already there.

Redeye isn't the problem. Redeye is just a window into Tribune's soul. Redeye, like baseball, provides an obvious handle on Tribune's preference for its chosen people — the young, urban professionals, typical of Wrigleyville, who are short on time and long on disposable income — and Tribune's bias against Chicago's poor, her old, the subcultures of the West Side and the South Side, the White Sox and their fans, anyone it can't sell as part of its idealized Chicago advertising demographic. Isn't that just the problem with you, Sox fans? Aren't you just a little too discriminating with your dollars? If you want to be a part of Tribune's Chicago, you'd better get shorter on time and longer on disposable income. And you'd better spend that time and income at Tribune-owned Wrigley Field.

Tribune Calls Kettle Black

The Tribune criticized City Hall in an editorial Sunday. Here's why that criticism failed.

We need a free press that keeps its nose clean so it can serve as an effective watchdog of government and business. Someone at the Tribune must have known this — once upon a time — because someone wrote it into their ethics policy:

Credibility is an indispensable asset of the Chicago Tribune Company ("Tribune"), as it is of any serious newspaper. To insure that our credibility is not damaged, editorial staff members have a special responsibility to avoid conflicts of interest or any activity that would compromise their journalistic integrity.

Notice that this ethics policy makes no distinction between the Tribune Company and the Tribune newspaper. Notice the current status of the Tribune Company's credibility. And notice that the Chicago Tribune neither follows its own ethics policy nor follows its own advice to City Hall:

In a Sunday editorial the Tribune criticized the city "for shrugging off an internal watchdog's recommendation." But the Tribune routinely disregarded the very few recommendations ever made by the watchdog it used to keep around, apparently only for appearances, former public editor N. Don Wycliff.

In a column on Aug. 18, 2005, Wycliff wrote that the Tribune's policy is to disclose its conflict of interest in all but routine game coverage of the Cubs: "The newspaper's policy is to explicitly mention its connection with Tribune Co. or a subsidiary 'when relevant.' As a practical matter, 'when relevant' means in almost any story except routine game coverage of the Cubs."

The Tribune ignored him.

In another column just three months later, on Nov. 17, 2005, Wycliff again criticized Tribune reporters for failing to disclose their conflict of interest when covering the Cubs: "The story failed to mention that the Cubs and the Tribune are siblings in Tribune Co. How many times must we be reminded of the need to err on the side of openness in acknowledging those relationships?"

The Tribune ignored him. It continues to ignore him.

Certainly the Tribune's coverage of the Cubs is only the most obvious handle of much larger ethical problems crippling the Tribune. The newspaper abuses its position just as much as any City Hall boss to promote assets like the Cubs, Careerbuilder and Wrigley Field, but no Tribune public editor has ever been willing to take a serious look at the dire ethical issues afflicting that newspaper, and it took months of imploring just to get Wycliff to take the tiny stand that he finally took when it comes to coverage of the Cubs. A tiny stand but a righteous stand, and the Tribune ignored him.

Now the Tribune is deeply immersed in very hot water not just for its ownership of the Cubs, but for the greater business strategy behind that dubious alliance — the "synergies" Tribune offers its advertisers between editorial, advertising, and content, synergies that no one outside of the tower wants to touch, synergies that have done nothing but damage the Tribune's credibility and destroy its journalistic integrity.

In its Sunday editorial, the Tribune tries to teach City Hall about integrity: "The message we'd like to see broadcast at City Hall is this: If you defraud the city and endanger the public, you'll lose your job. But that's a little too straightforward, apparently."

It's a little too straightforward for Tribune too, apparently. Instead of a pink slip, CEO Dennis Fitzsimmons is still taking home an $11 million paycheck after defrauding Chicago (and Los Angeles and Hartford, etc) of a decent newspaper while simultaneously depriving Tribune shareholders of billions in equity. That's two strikes. How did the Cubs do last year?

Here's what Tribune told City Hall on Sunday: "The city says it's sending a message to its employees. The real message: If you're politically connected and you defraud the city, you'll still get paid."

It's easy to blame the mayor for corruption at City Hall, but that blame also rests on local newspapers that squander their credibility for profit and fail in their vigilance of other institutions because they can't even keep their own noses clean.

How Tribune Sells Cubs Tickets in January

Turns out the Cubs are feeling optimistic about 2007. In today's Tribune, Paul Sullivan writes:

Usually teams that finish with the worst record in the National League spend January talking about rebuilding toward respectability. But coming off a 96-loss season, the 2007 Cubs are making bold statements about turning into instant contenders, and they are putting it on the record for posterity's sake.

We thought we'd see what they were putting on the record one year ago, you know, just for posterity's sake, at the start of their 96-loss, last-place season. A year ago Dave van Dyck wrote:

For a manager whose team finished 79-83 and in fourth place in the National League Central, Dusty Baker was unusually and uncharacteristically upbeat heading into this weekend's Cubs Convention.

Wow, what do you know? So what were the managers saying?

Lou Piniella, 2007: "Look, the perfect example of what we're talking about here is the New Orleans Saints. They were 3-13 last year, and on Sunday they're playing for a trip to the Super Bowl. That's how quickly things can turn around in sports, and that's what we're going to look forward to in Chicago this summer with the Cubs."

(Yep, the Cubs manager actually compared his team to the Bears' opponent. Lou's got a thing or two to learn about Chicago.)

Dusty Baker, 2006: "The momentum is there. We had some unfortunate situations and things that happened to us the last couple of years.... Baseball is a different game from year to year. You can go from top to bottom and back up pretty quickly. It's not how baseball used to be. I'm very excited. I'm more positive than ever before."

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. So what has changed? Last year Tribune reporter Dave van Dyck sounded skeptical of the Cubs' chances. Twelve months and 96 losses later, Tribune reporter Paul Sullivan sounds like he's fully on board the Cubs' spin express. Was that $136 million Soriano contract and a couple overpaid mediocre pitchers all the newsroom needed to put its doubts to rest? Or is the entire Cubune Empire marshaling its resources to combat the White Sox' documented dominance of local baseball?

Since these guys purportedly cover sports for a living, you'd think they would have noticed that the last five World Series championships have been won by teams with an average payroll of $80 million, about $25 million less than the Cubs will spend this year. In those five years, the Yankees spent $866 million, about $173 million per year, without winning a championship. It seems obvious to everyone outside of the Tribune Tower that payroll does not produce champions. So why are Tribune reporters so impressed by payroll expenditures? Why do they say it's a "bargain" to spend $15 million this year on Aramis Ramirez, a mediocre third baseman who lets pop flies bounce off his head and dogs his way around the bases, but they scarcely notice when the Sox secure a spectacular third baseman in Joe Crede for another year at less than $5 million?

There's no logic to the way the Chicago Tribune covers sports. It only makes sense in a twisted context, a profoundly different perspective inside the tower than outside the tower. What looks like sports coverage often amounts to tacit coverage of internal Tribune politics and external Tribune promotion.

"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.

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.

Tribune's Flaccid Reply to CJR

Some ladder-climbing suit in the tower has crafted a thoroughly bureaucratic response to the Columbia Journalism Review's indictment of the Tribune, a response so phlegmatic, predictable, and tiresome that almost no one has bothered to comment upon it (except Miami media critic Bob Norman, who called it "rather lame"). And I tell you, it wasn't fun reading for us either. It reads like Fred Mitchell on Xanax. But we downed another pot of coffee in the public interest, and waded diligently through the doublespeak. Here's what we find notable:

The suit goes by the name of Gerould W. Kern. He may have been a reporter once but now the etching on his brass nameplate says "vice president for editorial," which is exactly the kind of title you get when you sign a contract in your own blood and hand it to a guy with a pointy red tail.

Gerould offers very little evidence to defend Tribune from CJR's charge that the company's resources "aren't doing much public good." He lists five stories that Tribune newspapers have published that he says represent public-interest journalism. It hardly matters what the stories are. What matters is the number: five.

Last time we checked, Tribune owned 11-15 daily newspapers (depending on what you consider to be a newspaper. Redeye, for example?), 23 television stations, two news syndicates, one radio station, at least one magazine, a last-place baseball team, and a whole bunch of other crap, and Gerould thinks he can prove it's all doing public good by mentioning five stories? I'm not very old but I remember a day when ALL newspaper stories were supposed to contribute to the public good. In other words, there ought to be five of them on the front page of the Tribune every day.

Gerould, being well versed in what matters most in the tower, also attempts to quantify public good through monetary expenditure. Listen to this: "We spend $400 million annually on our newspaper newsrooms and employ 3,700 journalists, both figures ranking near the top of the industry."

Wow. $400 million. That sounds like a ton of money, right? Well, sure it does until you consider that Tribune just gave $136 million to a single guy, Alfonso Soriano, who runs, catches balls, and swings a stick for a living in toothpaste-blue pajamas with a little cap on his head. Soriano's $17 million annual salary rivals what the Tribune spends annually on some of those newsrooms. It's amazing what a little context does to Gerould's argument.

Gerould also thinks we'll be impressed that Tribune opened a new $10 million media center in Washington D.C. last year. Huh, that must be right around the time that Tribune's new $13.5 million bleachers opened in Chicago. Let's see: $10 million for American democracy, $13.5 million for a bunch of drunks. We see where your priorities are.

Finally, Gerould seems to think it favors Tribune that, "in each of our markets, Tribune puts more journalists on the streets to report on public affairs than anyone else by a wide margin."

Well, what do you think, Sox fans? You're Chicagoans. Would you rather have more Tribune reporters covering Chicago or would you rather have more reporters from some other newspaper?

Yeah, me, too. But we've got no choice in the matter. Tribune puts more reporters on the streets in its "markets" precisely because it considers them to be "markets." It's hotly in pursuit of multi-media monopoly in each. And we're pretty sure it's not chasing monopoly for the public good. We think it might just be chasing monopoly so it can liberate more money from the public wallet through its vile "synergies" between editorial and advertising and between television and newspapers.

Gerould really steps in his own poubelle with that comment - "in each of our markets" - because that's precisely the attitude that CJR wants to see banished from journalism. CJR calls for Tribune suits to be replaced by new newspaper owners who "will be citizens who understand that those dailies are not mere pieces of an economic puzzle but great living institutions rooted in the lives of their cities."

Cities, Gerould, not markets. Cities.

It's sad really. Because somewhere inside Gerould is a shriveled remnant of a young reporter who must have had a facility for sentences and an aspiration to do public good. Because that's what journalists are made of. But like so many who smell the money in that dark tower, the little fella took a terribly wrong turn.

Or a right turn, if it's really just all about the money.

Sportswriters Bored During Games

There are many reasons why the wall between Tribune and The Tribune is a fictitious wall, not the least of which involves the Tribune stock in the benefits package that The Tribune reporters receive in return for their souls. In today's Tribune, columnist Phil Rogers confesses to checking his stock prices while sitting in the press box during games. Just what you want in a sportswriter.

Tribune Staff Hides in Les Nessman's Office

Chicago Tribune employees apparently have convinced themselves that a Columbia Journalism Review editorial calling for the Tribune to get out of the newspaper business because it isn't "doing much public good" does not apply to them. Cubune Watcher Patrick Sheehan tells us Tribune staffers have told him the CJR editorial only applies to "Tribune" and not to "The Tribune."

Patrick wonders if there's tape on the floor in the Tribune Tower where Tribune ends and The Tribune begins, because we can't help but think of Les Nessman, news anchor for WKRP in Cincinatti. According to Wikipedia: "Before approaching (Nessman's) desk, one has to 'knock' on the nonexistent door, attached to the nonexistent walls of the nonexistent office he feels he deserves; those who don't face his ineffectual wrath."

There are many reasons why the wall between Tribune and The Tribune is a fictitious wall, not the least of which involves the Tribune stock in the benefits package that The Tribune reporters receive in return for their souls. In today's Tribune, columnist Phil Rogers confesses to checking his stock prices while sitting in the press box during games. Just what you want in a sportswriter.

There's also that question of "public good." If Tribune isn't doing much public good, doesn't it necessarily follow that The Tribune isn't either? After all, were Tribune to do some public good it would have to do so through institutions it owns, like The Tribune, that interact with the public.

And then there's this: when Tribune fired LA Times editor Dean Baquet, they replaced him with Chicago Tribune managing editor James O'Shea. Notice: Tribune sends Chicago Tribune editor to Los Angeles as an agent for the suppression of journalism.

That's not all. When Tribune fired LA Times publisher Jeffrey Johnson, they replaced him with former Chicago Tribune publisher David Hiller. Tribune sends Chicago Tribune publisher to Los Angeles as an agent for the suppression of journalism.

Ken Reich, a retired 39-year LA Times reporter who blogs on this catastrophe, doesn't see any wall between O'Shea, Hiller, and Tribune CEO Dennis Fitzsimmons. He refers to the three of them as the "axis of stupidity." If there's obviously no wall in Los Angeles, do you really expect us to believe there's a wall in Chicago? I guess so.

So let's just make this perfectly clear: if you walk from one end of the axis of stupidity to the other, you'd better knock on the invisible door in the invisible wall that's somewhere in between.

More Cracks in the Death Star

The Tribune likes hats. Sometimes they wear a felt cap with a press card in the band and pretend to be reporters, sometimes they don a Cubs ballcap and act like sports-action figures (who always lose), and sometimes they don the top hat of the man about town and flash some coin. And then, when you point to something dubious that they're doing, they will say, "That wasn't me, that was the guy in the other hat. Can't you see that we're completely different people?"

Um, no, you're not. And even when you say you are, sometimes you have more than one hat on your cabeza. Sometimes you're wearing the whole hat rack.

Anyway, this post concerns the McCormick Tribune Foundation (Top Hat), which claims to be a charity founded by Col. Robert McCormick, the white-collar criminal who first figured out that you can make a lot of money by disguising self-promotion as journalism. And by disguising self-promotion as charity, too.

The McCormick-Tribune Foundation wears the top hat of the well-heeled philanthropist but mostly busies itself buying up chunks of Chicago and branding its name on them. Thus, we have:

The McCormick Tribune Printers Row Book Fair
The McCormick Tribune Campus Center
The McCormick Tribune Plaza
The McCormick Tribune Center
The McCormick Tribune Ice Rink
The McCormick Tribune Emergency Room
The McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership
The McCormick Tribune Fellowship (which produces McCormick Tribune Fellows)
The McCormick Tribune Bridgehouse and Chicago River Museum
The McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum (how about some freedom from McCormick-Tribune?)
And just as soon as our greed gets the best of us, the McCormick Tribune Chicago Cubune Watch.

Who was it who said, to give is good, to give anonymously is better?

Back to our story.... The McCormick Tribune Foundation (Top Hat) is reconsidering its investment in the Tribune Company (Hat Rack). Because it values clarity so much, the Tribune Company sometimes calls itself the Tribune Corporation and other times, just Tribune. So we'll go with Hat Rack for now.

About 75 percent of Top Hat's money is invested in Hat Rack, which makes Top Hat the holder of 13 percent of Hat Rack. The problem is, Hat Rack's stock is going in the toilet, where Top Hat prefers not to venture. So Top Hat hired some suits to study whether it can get away from Hat Rack.

I know this is confusing, so just to restate: McCormick Tribune is considering a divorce from Tribune.

At least, that's what they say. Knowing Col. McCormick as we do, we suspect that he may have a fifth ace up his sleeve. The present crisis was precipitated by the Chandler Family of Los Angeles, which owns 20 percent of the Hat Rack. We think Top Hat might actually be planning to leverage its 13 percent to confront the Chandler shakeup with its own takeover of the whole Hat Rack.

Then what happens? Tribune has just bought Tribune, essentially. Nothing happens. Top Hat rehires the current regime of incompetents [E&P membership required], keeps the Cubs, keeps all the TV and radio stations, keeps the bias, and anyone who cares about truth and justice can just go to hell.

Now that's charity for ya.

Everything Much Worse Than We Thought

A few days ago we told you how Tribune columnist Fred Mitchell had turned the Tribune into a Tribune Company newsletter, but the situation was more heinous than we knew.

In his self-laudatory roundup of Tribune company news, Mitchell mentioned that Cubs President John McDonough "will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award during the Pitch and Hit Club's dinner Jan. 28." In fact, that's not quite true. The whole truth is that McDonough will receive the Bill Veeck Lifetime Achievement Award during the Pitch and Hit Club's dinner Jan. 28.

Cubune Watcher Keith Makenas discovered the discrepancy when he found the Pitch and Hit Club's website, the address of which had been incorrectly reported in Fred Mitchell's column.

Now why do you suppose Mitchell left out those two crucial words: Bill Veeck? Hard to say. In Journalism 101 they teach us to report full and correct titles at first reference. I don't remember an exception when the title refers to a White Sox owner. Maybe it's been a long time since Mitchell took Journalism 101, or maybe Mitchell and his colleagues are no longer practicing anything that can be called journalism.

Keith discovered some other interesting facts from the Pitch and Hit Club, which is honoring quite a few other people with awards that Mitchell did not include in his Cubs-adoring column:

The Patriot Award is going to Bryan Anderson, a Chicago-area Army veteran who gave an arm and two legs fighting in Iraq. Mitchell thinks McDonough is more praiseworthy than Anderson? That's just sick.

The Bill Gleason Sportswriter of the Year is Barry Rozner of the Daily Herald. Pretty obvious why Mitchell didn't see fit to mention that. And Rozner has been praised lately by White Sox fans for surpassing Tribune writers in his reporting on this winter's trades.

The Chicago White Sox Executive of the Year is groundskeeper Roger Bossard. Heck, the Tribune can't report that, or people will start asking questions about the lousy field conditions at Wrigley.

There is no Cubs Executive of the Year. For obvious reasons, we think. We would like to nominate Ann Marie Lipinski for the undying devotion her newspaper has shown to the team it owns. Or the team that owns it; it's not always clear. Cubs publicist Fred Mitchell makes a strong runner-up.

O'Fallon High School Pitcher Brandon Gass will receive the Bo Jackson Courage Award. Maybe Mitchell would have mentioned that one if Bo had only played for the Cubs. Sorry, Brandon.

The Nick Kamzic Scout of the Year is Dan Durst of the Chicago White Sox, one of the emcees is Sox trainer Herm Schneider, and music will be provided by Sox organist Nancy Faust. None of whom exist to Fred Mitchell.

Yep, there's a lot going on there, but Mitchell only kisses up to the Tribune exec. And these guys still claim they're not biased.

Where to Turn for Sox News

After a drought lasting several days, the Tribune finally scrounged up a White Sox story. At 9:06 p.m. last night, the Tribune published a story about the possibility that Juan Uribe may sit out next season. But that news broke seven hours earlier, at 2:16 p.m., on the White Sox Interactive Forum. Yes, Sox fans chatting on the internet are now scooping the Tribune on Chicago sports news.

CJR Calls for Tribune to Quit Journalism

The Columbia Journalism Review is the nation's leading journal covering the Fourth Estate. In its editorial this month, CJR calls upon Tribune to get out of the newspaper business:

Tribune has great resources, but those resources aren’t doing much public good. The company seems less than the sum of its parts. And so, like Rumsfeld, it should go. We’ll take our chances with the gaggle of billionaires who are lining up to buy those newspapers. Some of them may turn out to be pirates (see Santa Barbara). But others will be citizens who understand that those dailies are not mere pieces of an economic puzzle but great living institutions rooted in the lives of their cities.

This is no small kick in the chops. In a profession with no institutionalized accountability, CJR has emerged as journalism's leading voice, moderate and serious, anything but radical. This is equivalent to the Chronicle of Higher Education calling for the closure of a university on the grounds that it no longer serves its students. Think how low a university would have to sink for that to happen: that's how low Tribune has sunk in the world of journalism.

CJR mentions the Tribune's failed strategy to "use its print-TV overlaps to create editorial and advertising synergies." That's reporter code language for the kind of sleaze we've been telling you about. And the endless grievances of White Sox fans prove that even and especially in Chicago the Tribune has failed to be "a great living institution rooted in the life of its city."

Happy New Year, Sox fans. May we end 2007 with another trophy and a newspaper in our city that greets our championship with sincere celebration rather than token celebration that soon turns to envy and denial. And may we begin 2008 with a reformed Tribune or no Tribune. Either will do.

Tribune Stops Covering White Sox in Favor of Covering Self

We've always had Fred Mitchell pegged as a pretty good company man, the kind of guy who makes an impromptu speech in honor of the editor over the punchbowl at the Christmas party, who donates the fattened pig to the annual summer barbecue in the pressroom parking lot, certainly a guy more loyal to his employer than to the facts, but tell me if his items column today doesn't actually read like a company newsletter:

New Cubs outfielder Alfonso Soriano rang in the New Year with a newborn baby boy. Soriano and his wife, Angelica, welcomed their third child and second son when Angel entered the world Wednesday at a Miami hospital....

John McDonough has been interim president of the Cubs for about three months, yet he will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award during the Pitch and Hit Club's dinner Jan. 28 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. McDonough previously distinguished himself as the innovative marketing director for the Cubs....

Cubs catcher Michael Barrett has reached an agreement to be a spokesman for the Original Gino's East of Chicago. He will make several personal appearances at Gino's East restaurants during the year.

What about Janice in the mailroom and her upcoming spa weekend in Lake Geneva? Or do you have to earn seven figures to make it into the Tribune newsletter? To Mitchell's great credit, he does manage to squeeze a mention of the White Sox into the column, which is better than most of his colleagues have done lately. Here it is Sox fans (drumroll please):

The March of Dimes Comcast SportsNet Sports Awards will be Feb. 12 to honor White Sox, Cubs, Bulls, Blackhawks, Bears and Fire players. Tickets are $250.

Wow. He even listed us first. Who says the Tribune isn't fair? That's about it for Sox coverage in our city's august morning daily, unless you count "Cubs, Cotts Agree on 1-Year Deal." (Sheesh. Poor Neal. I feel like we traded him to the Lincoln Park Zoo). The last Sox story was a Dec. 31 interview with Sox Pitching Coach Don Cooper, but that story struck me as a perfunctory companion to the Dec. 31 interview with Cubs Pitching Coach Larry Rothschild, a true genius only in Cubuneland.

If you ask the Tribune they'll tell you they are utterly unaffected by their affiliation with the Cubs, and if the newspaper is full of Cubs news and not Sox news, it's simply because the Sox aren't making any news. But we tend to suspect the Trib doesn't quite have its finger on the pulse of the Sox in quite the same way that it does with the team across the hall in the Tribune Tower.

If you ask Kenny Williams he'll tell you no news is good news. And who can blame him? Imagine taking probing calls from reporters who just happen to work for your only competitor in town. That's gotta be tough. I'd long for the quiet too. More power to Kenny for finding it.

If you ask Sox fans, they'll tell you why it's called the Cubune.

But hold on Sox fans: Maybe absence of coverage is actually an improvement, considering how the Tribune has covered the White Sox lately. For example, the Tribune called the trade of one White Sox pitcher a "fire sale," while the Cubs' $75 million signing of Aramis Ramirez was described as a "bargain." This is the selfsame Aramis Ramirez who tried to catch a routine fly ball with the top of his head last year. Remember that? And did you notice that when that ball ponged off his noggin, allowing the winning run to score, Aramis didn't even flinch? Athos and Porthos flinched, but not Aramis. It was as if a snowflake had alighted on his pate. That's some skull. I guess the Ramirez contract is a bargain if you're accustomed to paying more than $75 million for a battering ram.

Sigh. The beat goes on. While we wait for the tanks to roll in from Los Angeles.

p.s. If you grab a pizza at Gino's, watch out for the sucker punch.