The Rapists of Wrigleyville

Another woman has been sexually assaulted in the shadow of Wrigley Field. In a three minute report, ABC 7 News referred to the neighborhood as Wrigleyville. The Tribune is calling it Lakeview, even though the assault — at 3700 N. Lakewood — occurred just four blocks from The Shrine. The Tribune seizes every opportunity to link crime to U.S. Cellular Field, but makes certain that much more serious crimes are not associated with the baseball stadium it owns at Clark and Addison.

But the fact that rapists lurk in the shadows of Wrigleyville, waiting for female adherents of the alcohol-soaked culture up there to stumble home in the wee hours of weekend mornings, has everything to do with a neighborhood under the influence of Wrigley Field and with the Tribune Company's relentless promotion of the Bleacher Bum culture inside and outside of the stadium walls (See all the ongoing Metromix and Redeye coverage of Wrigleyville, for example).

But the Tribune's relationship to sexual assault is complex. This weekend's assault once again merited a front-page community alert from the Tribune's web edition, even if that alert was very careful to steer very clear of any mention of Wrigley. The Tribune routinely ignores sexual assaults in most of the rest of the city, especially neighborhoods where the women tend not to be Caucasian. You can bet, though, that if a sexual assault occurred that close to U.S. Cellular Field, we'd hear about it, and they'd find a way to tie it to the White Sox.

Another Way to Get Ripped Off at Wrigley

As we've documented many times, the Tribune often associates U.S. Cellular Field with crime, even though far more serious crimes occur at or near Tribune-owned Wrigley Field. The proof of their deceit is out now in the Tribune's own "Burglary Map" published this week in Redeye (click on the image for a larger view). The Armour Square neighborhood around U.S. Cellular Field falls into the map's most crime-free category, with less than 100 burglaries per year. Nearby Bridgeport falls into the second-most crime-free category, with less than 400. But Lakeview, home of The Shrine, stands out on the map in bright red with between 700 and 1,000 burglaries per year. Of course, the Tribune doesn't mention the ballparks in this report. That would be bad for business.

Bad Form

When they're not whining about the location of their free seats (second item here) Tribune reporters are crying that they don't feel special. Here's a post by Cubs beat reporter Paul Sullivan and a couple of select responses from readers:

Bad form. Cubs general manager Jim Hendry announced the Kendall trade during the Cubs telecast on WCIU-Ch. 26 last night, making the media wait until afterward to learn of the deal. The Cubs PR department had the press release already written and was simply waiting for Hendry to announce it on TV before telling the beat reporters. Maybe this is the wave of the future, but it shows how little the organization cares about the reporters who cover their team every day. I don't know of any other team that announces its trades on TV, but the Cubs apparently believe they're above it all. -- Paul Sullivan

Comments

On your last "Bad Form" report, wasn't Hendry's action just a way to reward to the VERY interested, listening, and immediately "present" fans? Why the intermedia jealousy?

This is just making you - and your employer - look like a bunch of carping beat writers. Paul, you already have a tendency toward - ahem - uptightness. Just relax! I'll bet that if you spent a year being laid back around the team, they might begin to treat you differently.

And, aren't you forgetting that you work for The Newspaper with the ~very best~ access to all things Cubs?

Please do get off the high horse. This last point highlights the dangers of blogging: writing about topics that exhibit poor thinking on the part of the author. Here's where an editor is helpful! - TL

Posted by: Tim Lacy | Jul 17, 2007 10:49:16 AM

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Paul, if you are complaining like this when the Tribune still owns the team, at least sort of, I do not even want to think about how you are going to scream your lungs out when the Cubs are independent of the Tribune, and can give you the treatment that it sounds like you deserve. Like maybe replacing your seat in the press box with a high chair, and putting a bib on you so that you can be spoon-fed the news. Hendry was totally correct in telling the fans, who have stayed with the Cubs through an incredible drought of non-Series years that the Cubs were going to do their best to do it THIS YEAR. Now shut up, stop your carping, and enjoy the wild ride to October.

Posted by: Dale Ridder | Jul 17, 2007 2:00:39 PM

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.

Dissed Again? We're Used to It.

It's almost funny to read the Tribune's feigned indignation about ESPN leaving the White Sox off of a poll about Chicago teams ("South Siders Get Dissed Again," July 14). What the Tribune really seems to be saying, with this story, is "See, we're not the only ones." Or "See, it's not our fault — it's endemic to the White Sox." But why oh why would anyone expect a national media organization like ESPN — a national organization that openly embraces bias, we might add — to identify the White Sox with Chicago when Chicago's own media don't identify the White Sox with Chicago.

Particularly those Cubs-owning media, like the Chicago Tribune and Superstation WGN, that represent Chicago on the national stage.

Yet More Reasons A Newspaper Shouldn't...

... own a baseball team. In today's Tribune, business reporter Michael Oneal, who covers Tribune for the Tribune, reveals a new potential buyer of the Cubs:

The family that founded discount broker TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. has joined the list of potential bidders for the Chicago Cubs, the Tribune has learned.

Note: "the Tribune has learned" is reporter code language, feigning modesty while actually meaning, "hot diggity dog we gotta scoop!" Oneal goes on:

Sources close to the situation said the Ricketts family of Omaha and Chicago has signed a non-disclosure agreement with Cubs owner Tribune Co. and is readying the application Major League Baseball requires of all parties wishing to bid on one of its franchises.

You see the problem already, don't you. In the first paragraph, the Tribune discloses the new buyer. In the second paragraph, we learn the new buyer has a non-disclosure agreement with the Tribune.

When confronted with this sort of contradiction, Tribune reporters and editors gather in Les Nessman's office and insist there is no contradiction because, they sigh exasperatedly, Tribune and the Tribune are different. And if you believe that load of Indiana farm-fresh fertilizer, we've got a baseball team to sell you for a billion dollars.

A storied franchise, to be exact

Later in his story, Oneal refers to his precious (billion-dollar) Cubbies as one of baseball's "most storied franchises."

That they are. They are the most storied because the Tribune has written far more stories about them than any other baseball team. Even during the two seasons when the White Sox owned first place wire-to-wire, won a World Series and defended it, the Tribune published 1,400 more stories mentioning its storied Cubbies. Read all about it, if you haven't already, here.


Thanks to Lone Ranger for assisting with this post.

Foreign Substance in Tribune Reporting: Mediocrity

We've been waiting for years for the Tribune's big scoop on Sammy Sosa, a stunning investigative splash that explains how Sosa went from skinny mediocre player to incredible hulk and back again, the kind of reporting that landed a couple of San Francisco Chronicle reporters in jail for protecting their sources. So far the Tribune's been pretty easy on former Tribune employee Sammy Sosa. But today they gave it their best shot. Are you ready? Hold on to your hats. From Fred Mitchell:

Several sources close to the Cubs have told me Sosa was not the only Cubs player who used a corked bat, at least in 2003. On the night Sosa's bat exploded for all to see, officials from Major League Baseball notified the Cubs organization during the game that they had one hour to get rid of any other corked bats of Sosa's in the team's clubhouse before they came down to inspect his arsenal of bats. More than 70 marked corked bats then were extricated quickly by Cubs personnel from the clubhouse, about a third of them belonging to other players.

It wasn't quite the big scoop we were looking for, but at least it was news... in 2003. Where were Fred's sources back when the story was hot, back when cork was the most-discussed foreign substance? Who were the other players involved? What else were they injecting, besides cork, and where were they injecting it? This is apparently the best the Tribune can do, at least when it comes to negative news about the company team. Too little, too late, and even then, buried in Mitchell's cute-items column.

Tribune Takes Credit for Buehrle Signing

The Chicago Tribune did nothing but screw up negotiations between Mark Buehrle and the White Sox with erroneous reporting, fictional controversy, and sanctimonious preaching (see previous post). But that didn't stop the Tribune from taking credit today for Buehrle's re-signing. This unbelievable tidbit comes from Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey:

It's nice to know that sometimes people listen, whether it's to reason or to fans or even to this tiny corner of the world called the newspaper. Both sides listened and understood. Team Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf listened. So did Buehrle.

There's no evidence the deal was influenced by the Tribune or anyone else who stuck their nose in Buehrle's business. Both sides knew what they wanted, both sides fought for it, both sides compromised. But as we've seen, if the Tribune doesn't toot its own horn, no one else will.

And while they were at it, the Tribune also credited its company team, the Chicago Cubs. This comes from Tribune "baseball expert" Phlip-Phlop Rogers:

The White Sox did what it took to keep Buehrle in uniform through 2011, and for that all parties involved deserve a lot of credit. Even the Cubs, who weren't involved, deserve some credit.

Why do the Cubs deserve credit in Rogers' expert opinion? Because Buehrle says he likes playing against the Cubs.

He thrives on the City Series and all things about Chicago baseball, which is just one of the dozens of reasons that it is a very good thing that Buehrle decided to stick around rather than testing a free-agent market that could have rewarded him with crazy money.

Don't expect to understand this level of expert thinking, Sox fans. Rogers' thinking is so expert, you have to be Rogers to understand it. And it's lonely in there. Try, for example, extending his logic:

Buehrle likes sliding on the infield tarp during rain delays. So, really, the infield tarp deserves credit for Buehrle's re-signing.

Yeah, okay, that makes some sense. And the infield tarp also deserves credit as a superior newspaper, because at least you can believe what you read on the infield tarp.

A Tempest in a Tribune

Today the White Sox re-signed one of our most iconic players, and the Chicago Tribune lost any hope of continuing to cover up one of its most endemic errors. On Jan. 11, 2007, the Chicago Tribune declared "the end of an era on the South Side" because, according to their eagle-eyed reporting, pitcher Mark Buehrle was gone. Here are the exact words from Tribune reporter Dave van Dyck:

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.
It will be the end of an era on the South Side, with Buehrle having helped usher in the new winning feeling in 2000.

Buehrle signed a new four-year contract with the White Sox today, but it didn't take half a year for the error of van Dyck's reporting to become obvious. It was obvious to many Sox fans on the day van Dyck's story appeared. Anyone who knows Ken Williams could see that van Dyck's "in other words" interpretation of Williams' quote was an egregious — and probably malicious — misinterpretation.

Williams and Buehrle said as much in subsequent days. Here's Williams at SoxFest in January:

"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."

And here's Buerhle the very next day:

"It's something that some of the media people took differently and ran with it."

But the Tribune never corrected its error. On the contrary, Tribune reporters did their utmost to drive a wedge between White Sox fans and White Sox management by stoking a controversy where no legitimate controversy ever existed. And sadly, most of this town's media followed along. All the Sox and Buehrle ever needed was time to talk. But for six months we've had to listen to sanctimonious reporters preaching about the sin of trading Buehrle while scarcely concealing their hope that the Sox would trade him away. Here's Tribune "baseball expert" Phlip-Phlop Rogers:

By failing to prioritize the signing of his most marketable arms, White Sox general manager Ken Williams has committed himself to constructing future rotations around Jose Contreras, the oldest of the five 2006 starters, and Vazquez, the only one of the five who has a losing career record (100-105, including 11-12 season a year ago).... Make no mistake about it. Buehrle, eligible for free agency after this season, and Garland, signed through 2008, are going to follow Garcia (traded to Philadelphia for pitching prospects Gavin Floyd and Gio Gonzalez) out of town unless they compromise value to stay. On the one hand, that's the way the business works. But on the other, it still seems remarkable that a team would fail to do some heavy lifting to keep home-grown foundation pieces like Buehrle and Garland.

Make no mistake about it, Phlip-Phlop is just as wrong in July as Vandy was in January. The Sox re-signed Garland after 2005, re-signed Contreras in 2006, re-signed Vazquez at the start of 2007, and re-signed Buehrle today. And Danks has proved worth more than McCarthy and Garcia combined. All the controversy we've read about starting pitching has been a tempest in a Tribune. Anywhere outside of the Cubune Tower, the Sox have done a great job pinning down a solid rotation.

It's no accident that the White Sox announced Buehrle's signing to the Sox fans at U.S. Cellular Field today instead of feeding it to a bunch of malicious gossips at a press conference.