Tribune Urges Charlie Brown to Kick Football

The front page of today's Tribune declares that 'Foul-up in '03 is history.' There's news for you. An editorial yesterday urged Cub fans to forget history:

Steve Bartman come home; all is forgiven. The Chicago Cubs are in the playoffs. Forget the goat. Forget the choke. Forget 1929, 1945, every single season between 1947 and 1966, 1969 and especially 2003. Let bygones be bygones. Go Cubs!

Should it make you wary when a major media corporation urges you to forget history? What's the saying about those who forget history?

And why would the Tribune want their legion of devoted supplicants to forget history? The reporters always insist that when they do nasty biased self-serving things, they do them unconsciously, not because they're getting orders from upstairs. And news flash: we believe them. We're sure it has nothing to do with a Tribune-wide effort to whip Cub fans into a frenzy, to sell unprecedented tons of playoff memorabilia, to demonstrate to potential franchise buyers what an enormous mass of Charlie Browns follow their team. We don't think it has anything to do with the fact that the people who write these stories benefit directly from a sale of the Cubs because of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (although, it would be easier to believe innocence on this point if they disclosed that fact, as ethical standards require). And who knows? Maybe they're doing Cub fans a favor by urging them to be more stoopid. Maybe this year will be different. Maybe the Cubbies will win it all. To the Tribune, that doesn't really matter. Victory would be sweet indeed, but they can still sell the rubes a lot of crap along the way to another failure. Whether or not the Tribune is playing Lucy consciously or not, purposely or not, the simple fact remains that the Tribune has $12 billion in debt and one asset, on the market right now, that can make a dent in it. So come on, Charlie Brown, I'll hold the football, and you kick it!

Sox Fans: Wear Your Colors

Many important details from 2005 went unreported, and among them: Cubs logos vanished from Chicago for a good six months. We traverse this city as frantically as ants, and from October 2005 to April 2006 we counted one poor sucker wearing a Cubs cap. Even the Tribune Store seemed to switch teams. Its windows were suddenly bursting with silver and black, not out of any sense of pride or propriety, mind you, but simply because that company will scarf any dollar it can smell. A very different motivation led Cubs fans to doff their silly blue pajamas and caps, it seems to me. They were ashamed and they were afraid of being put to shame by proud Sox fans.

Let's not be that chickenshit. If ever there were a moment to show our Sox pride, this is such a moment. I suppose this goes without saying for most Sox fans. We're accustomed to being beyond the pale, on the wrong side of the tracks, outside of the comfy illusion in which the privileged rubes wrap themselves, and we've always worn our colors in defiance rather than compliance.

Last night was somehow momentous for many in Chicago, even though it just seemed to consist of one mediocre team, the Milwaukee Brewers, lying down to let another mediocre team walk on its back into fantasyland. We spent last night in the best possible location for such an occasion: U.S. Cellular Field, watching Javier Vazquez shut down the Tigers and Paulie stroke one more line drive into the left-field seats.

The place was rocking and packed, almost sold out, which would have been impossible to imagine for a White Sox team with this record just three years ago. A few Cubs fans were there, chanting "Let's go Cubbies" and waving a Cubs flag, which just looked preposterous with that World Series trophy still shining in its display case. Despite the fact that the Tribune tries its mightiest to scare people away from U.S. Cellular Field, those Cubs fans left with all their teeth. Maybe The Cell is just a bit too safe, know what I mean? In the old stadium those fellows would have been swiftly dispatched to unconsciousness, but nowadays Sox fans just smiled and ignored them. Everything has changed. We won the nine-decades-long race and nothing that happens this year can change that. Even a championship can't redeem the Cubs now.

Let us not forget that this is Chicago, the city of hustle and muscle. The North Side is all hustle, as in trickery, where a crappy crumbling stadium is revered and losing is somehow lovable — the South Side all muscle, where our victories may be few but we know they're real. So in these days of ugliness, Sox fans, when the trickery claims to be trumping the true, wear your colors.

(And arm yourself with a response for the first dipstick you encounter who says, "go cubs.")

Tribune Fever: Catch It!

The Tribune's website has a cool new Cubs Fever section. I don't remember their Sox Fever section in 2005. Do you? Of course, the Tribune doesn't profit directly from Sox Fever, but they do profit directly from Cubs Fever, and so what if they violate the provision of journalism ethics that says,

"Journalists should avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived, remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility, disclose unavoidable conflicts... deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage."

Hardly anyone seems to respect their "journalism" anyway. You can't polish a turd, as they say.

When you go to the Tribune's new Cubs Fever section, you can watch a bunch of mediocre Tribune videos about the Tribune's precious Cubbies and you can send a Piniella-Gram. I don't remember seeing an Ozzie-Gram in 2005, do you? Even though Ozzie tends to say more colorful things than Lou. And more true things. With an Ozzie-Gram, for example, you could call Jay Mariotti a $&$%#% #^$*&.

Or an #$%$# *&.

Let's see if we can make Lou tell the truth by clicking on him:

Tribune-Only TV

Cubune Watcher Bryan Dykes noticed the "On the Air" section on top of the Tribune this morning. "I guess this is where you list the local games that are on TV tonight?" he asks, because listed was the Cubs game, the Sox game, DePaul Volleyball, the Blackhawks game, and Chicago Tribune Live, the Tribune-owned sports show on partially Tribune-owned Comcast Sportsnet

Dykes asks, "A) When did Chicago Tribune Live become a sport, or B) Is Chicago Tribune Live the ONLY sports talk show on TV and cable?"

We vote for C) The Tribune uses its editorial space to promote its own investments and assets, and this just proves it once again.

Tribune: Congratulations Tribune!!!

1. Stuart Dybeck, who hails from and writes about Chicago, won a $500,000 MacArthur genius grant. The Tribune headline: "Stuart Dybek: We knew he was a genius all along." Yeah, sure, congrats Stu, but first and foremost, CONGRATULATIONS TRIBUNE! And not because the Tribune ever actually said Dybek was a genius or predicted his grant — no, they just want a piece of his cake. The first piece, thank you very much. Next, we predict, the McCormick-Tribune Foundation will purchase Stuart Dybek and rename him The McCormick-Tribune Stuart Dybek.

Maybe the Tribune finally learned its lesson from 1951, when it compared Nelson Algren's "Chicago, City on the Make" to a piece of excrement. That little book just turned out to be the best prose portrait of Chicago ever written. New strategy: instead of panning great literature upon its debut, wait for writer to win award, then claim the achievement as your own. Genius, Tribune, sheer genius. Congratulations, Tribune! You should get the genius grant!

2. Some guy gets convicted for conning churches out of their properties. Who nailed him: the police? the district attorney? Spiderman? No... the Tribune! Here's their subhed: "Tribune Investigation shed light on scheme, alerted others to thefts." God thanks you, Tribune. Since we have you wearing your tin star, maybe we don't actually need police or a district attorney. That would save the taxpayers money. Congratulations, Tribune!

(Also, notice that Tribune Investigation is capitalized, unlike the rest of the headline, as if a Tribune Investigation is a proper noun, like, I dunno, The Untouchables. Watchout badguys!)

3. Congressman resigns after failing to disclose beachfront property he owns in Nicaragua. Tribune writes (on Sept. 22, 2007), "A Tribune investigation recently revealed Weller failed to disclose several Nicaraguan land transactions on his congressional ethics forms." Wow, Tribune, you're keeping the politicians honest! Congratulations, Tribune! Except, are you honest yourself? Because can you actually disclose something that was reported in the Chicago Reader almost a year earlier (Oct. 25, 2006)?

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/wellerbeach/

Shame on you, Tribune. And let this be a lesson to you, Chicagoans: if you visit the Tribune Tower, keep your hand on your wallet. If they'll steal credit for your grant, your hard work, and your scoop, they'll steal anything.

Let Us Compare

Today's Tribune predicts the World Series is within reach for the Tribune-owned Cubbies, in spite of the fact that the team's meteoric rise to mediocrity seems fueled largely by the bottom loving suckage of the rest of their division. This inspired us to see what the Tribune was up to on Sept. 25, 2005, when the White Sox were 1.5 games up in their division, where they had been all season, and had just thumped the Minnesota Twins 8-1.

WOE IS OZ ; The White Sox precipitous plunge has their outspoken manager's emotions on a gut-wrenching roller-coaster ride;

Melissa Isaacson, Tribune staff reporter.
You are tired just from listening, drained by the relentless questions and the patient answers, worn out from watching a man trying to explain himself, to the point where it seems even he is confused, pouring out his soul until his eyes are red, his face is moist and he finally must slump to a sitting position on the concrete steps of the White Sox's dugout. This was Ozzie Guillen's day Thursday, really just the tiniest sliver of a day, of a week that must feel like a month and a month that must seem like eternity for the manager of Chicago's slumping White Sox.

Ah yes, "precipitous plunge," worry and woe on the South Side, a World Series within reach on the North Side. The Tribune staff was apparently too busy salivating over the prospect of a White Sox collapse to consider what it meant that the team had just pounded the Minnesota Twins. It's true that the 2007 Cubs have just distanced themselves from the Brewers, while the 2005 White Sox were just beginning their streak to the finish line, but don't we expect our reporters to be a little something more than wind socks and Cub fans? In the Chicago Tribune Magazine on Sept. 25, 2005, crack investigative reporter Jeff Lyons is writing about what? You guessed it, attendance. The headline makes it clear the Magazine is writing only for Cubs fans:

IF A WHITE SOX-CARDINALS WORLD SERIES SHOULD MATERIALIZE, CONSIDER THIS:

Sox manager Ozzie Guillen would be up against his former boss, Tony La Russa, who piloted the Sox in 1985, the year Guillen debuted in the bigs. If you believe in the ex-Cub factor, the Sox have the edge. They have only one former Cub, Ross Gload, but the Cards have three-Ray King, Julian Tavarez and Mark Grudzielanek. Both teams have won in spite of serious injuries (Sox: Scott Podsednik, Joe Crede, Frank Thomas; Cards: Scott Rolen, Reggie Sanders). Chicago has 3 times the population of St. Louis, but the Cards have drawn 3.4 million to the Sox's 2.3.

Like We Been Sayin

Since so many of the mainstream Chicago media are deeply invested in the deceitful practices of marketing their investments, and the rest are supplicant to the Empire, you have to get out of The Chi to find reliable intelligence. Check out this on-the-money column by Michael Hunt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Here's a taste:

In somehow portraying themselves as the ultimate underdog and the lovable losers, the Cubs have pulled off maybe the biggest scam in the history of professional sports. It's like Big Oil being successfully sold as baby seal lovers. No one would buy that, yet legions of Cubs fans didn't seem to mind when the $1 billion franchise scalped its own tickets back to them.

Big City Cubs Pull Off Ruse of Underdog

Tribune Real Estate Called Dumpy & Dangerous

Among those many things you won't read in the Tribune, you won't read what a dump Wrigley Field is. It's for sale, after all.

Today's Daily Herald features a story in which the Pittsburgh Pirates join the Cincinatti Reds in calling Wrigley's outfield "the worst in the major leagues." Here are some quotes from the Daily Herald about the crumbling eyesore that Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin calls "a sacred garden":

"It's rock hard and it's as fast as turf and looks like there's been a dozen cows grazing out there for the past week," said Pirates left fielder Nate McLouth. "It was the worst I've ever played on. Taking balls in (batting practice) you kind of came to the conclusion that you can't really charge a ball that's hard hit…. It was by far the worst I've ever played in and it's unfortunate because it does kind of play into the game, it does have an impact."

"The outfield is not good, it's not good, it's not (a) major-league caliber outfield. It's really bad, as a matter of fact," said Pittsburgh manager Jim Tracy. "I noticed it as soon as I walked in behind the cage today for batting practice. It's very, very difficult to play the outfield out here. The outfield is horrendous to play on, as bad as I've ever seen it in the big leagues."

“The ground is pounded down, you watch balls roll and moving all over the place," Tracy said. "The ball is moving out there as fast as I've ever seen it to try and draw a bead on it."

"I'm surprised more people don't get injured out there. It's as bad as there is," said Reds left fielder Adam Dunn. "It's worse than playing in a parking lot. It looks like they had a monster truck rally. It's terrible. There's potholes. It's bad. It's unsafe."

Now to be fair, the Tribune did allow a couple of AP stories to slip into print that include some buried criticism of their precious investment property. Both stories raised the topic in light of Ken Griffey Jr.'s injury in right field last week. Maybe the Tribune thinks that covers it. But as far as assigning some local reporters to get the scoop, well, let's just say this story falls into the same category as Sammy Sosa's incredible hulk routine: don't ask, don't tell.

How Soon They Forget

Tribune writers must be wetting their pants for their Cubbies to get into the playoffs so they can finally erase any records or memories of the 2005 season. They've been actively forgetting ever since 2005, as we've reported before, but Mark Gonzales takes forgetting to new heights in his story today:

Jose Contreras and Jon Garland pitched the Sox's first consecutive complete games since David Wells and Jim Parque went the distance in 2001.

Funny, we seem to remember White Sox pitchers throwing four consecutive complete games during the American League Championship Series in 2005. Not all that long ago, really.


Thanks to Brett Ballantini for this and many recent posts.

A Day in the Life of Tribune Bias

The Cubs are for sale. Tribune employees benefit directly from the sale, so there's no time like the present for the Tribune to promote its favorite team, and today's Tribune nicely illustrates how they're doing it.

First, there's a page-one article about cheating, as in Bill Belichick. On the jump, the article describes George Halas both allegedly cheating and worrying about cheating. But then the article makes the leap to baseball, with its oft-stolen signs. Not only does it target Bill Veeck
and scoreboard allegations from Old Comiskey (Isn't Wrigley the park with a guy in the scoreboard?), but it drags up former Sox coach Joe Nossek and runs a picture of him beside the article. I guess that's because he "was the master of stealing signs" as stated in the photo caption.

Really? Are those the only cheaters we can come up with in Chicago baseball? Even if the Tribune was too investigatively impotent (or disinterested) to prove the allegations that former Tribune employee Sammy Sosa's Cubbie career came out of a syringe, how do they talk about cheating and overlook that corked bat?

No, the Tribune has better use for its precious Cubbies.

The Cubs show up in two other unlikely areas of the paper. In the Q-Section, an article on "One Lively Cemetary" discusses people personalizing the gravestones of their dearly departed. Wouldn't ya know it, someone chiseled a Cubs logo into a headstone. How quaint.

Meanwhile, in the Real Estate section, there's an article about "Condo buyers benefitting as more sellers willing to make a deal." So how do they work their precious Cubbies in? Not so subliminally. One photo accompanying the article has a happy condo owner not only posing in his starter condo, but sporting a Cub hat while doing so.

Ah yes: cheaters on the South Side, only the eternally loyal and prosperous on the North Side. And like Sosa's bat, your Tribune is full of [cork].

Thanks to Lone Ranger for writing this post.

The Daily Diss

Today's Tribune Business section includes a story by Tribune staff reporter Becky Yerak about a dispute over Bears tickets in the bankruptcy proceedings of Sentinel Management Group. Apparently, Sentinel owned six season tickets to Bears games and four season tickets to White Sox games, and the former employee who sat in the Bears seats is trying to hold onto the tickets. Stop the freakin' presses! Slow news day? The story's so pointless we think the whole fiasco may have been written just so Becky Yerak, who as a Tribune employee has a financial interest in the Cubs, could write its last line:

No tussle occurred over the White Sox tickets.

We're sure Yerak will say she was just reporting the facts. Yeah, right.

Seeing Cubbie Blue (and Only Cubbie Blue)

Your Sunday Tribune Magazine included a nearly 2,000-word feature about a blog, Bleed Cubbie Blue, that's only been around since 2005. The Tribune author, Donald Liebenson, is really impressed that the blog has over 3,000 registered users (WhiteSoxInteractive.com has 8,144, but doesn't merit a mention in the article), and that the blog belongs to a network of blogs (SouthSideSox.com, which belongs to the same network, doesn't merit a mention in the article).

And Just when you think Liebenson is about to mention the other team in town, and its network of equally devoted bloggers:

"BCB is not the only game in town. The many other Cubs blogs, with names such as Agony and Ivy, Goat Riders of the Apocalypse, Cub Fan Nation, Bleacher Hideaway and View from the Bleachers, are testaments to the fact that everybody talks about the Cubs, but unlike the weather, everyone seems to know what to do about them."

He doesn't.

What's really going on here? It seems likely that the author, his editors, and his publisher bleed cubbie blue too, and none of them give a rat's ass about ethical journalism.

Tribune Chomping at Bit for Sox Elimination

The lords in the Dark Tower can't wait for the White Sox to be eliminated from the playoffs so they can finally give up their flimsy pretense of Sox coverage and devote all their abundant resources to the company team. Check out the headline today:

Sox comeback delays inevitable
Record-setting win staves off elimination

The Associated Press story on last night's game doesn't mention elimination, while the Tribune mentions it twice in the headline, before we even get to the story. Similar machinations are at work in the story itself.

AP: After Thome was intentionally walked, Scott Podsednik hit a grounder to second baseman Nick Punto, who flipped to Jason Bartlett covering the bag. But Bartlett never got his foot on the bag. Punto was charged with a throwing error and Pierzynski followed with an RBI single to end the 4 hours and 29 minute marathon.

Tribune's Mark Gonzales: Pierzynski's single came one play after second-base umpire Joe West ruled that second baseman Nick Punto's throw pulled shortstop Jason Bartlett off the bag on a force play.

Notice how Gonzo leaves room for doubt over Joe West's call, which the AP reports cleanly. Maybe Gonzo had his elimination story pre-written so he could concentrate on his nachos during the game, and this way he didn't have to revise too much. Yeah, either that or the Tribune has a big countdown to Sox elimination board in the newsroom, waiting for the day they can finally pretend they own the whole town.

We're Back, and Evil Still Prevails

Thank you for all your emails. We've been quiet for a while because the Bridgeport Headquarters of the Cubune Watch were closed for staff vacations, and we have to say, it was nice visiting democratic societies where free people benefit from a diverse and ethical media, and it's a little hard coming back to a city that's smothered by a monolithic mediocrity monopoly. We were also hoping justice would right itself in our absence, that the Force would be with us once again and the Dark Empire vanquished, but alas....

Upon our return, we did notice one very interesting change in the Chicago Tribune: bylines have now become part of headlines. On Sunday Derek Lee hit a game-winning home run and on Monday the Cubune headline read like this:

Lee, Cubs embrace playoff atmosphere,
motor to huge win, writes Paul Sullivan

And yes, just like that, with Paul Sullivan's name actually bigger and bolder than Derek Lee's name, even though Lee hit a game-winning homer and all Sully did was watch it fly and write that down.

We have to assume Derek still gets the bigger, bolder paycheck, but who knows? Now that the Tribune is being booted out of the baseball business maybe they're planning to put all their marketing energies into commodifying their reporters. Maybe Dave van Dyck will end his stories (and when we say stories, we really do mean stories, as in fiction) with a hop and a heart thump. Can't wait.