Chicago Magazine Wins Cash-Cow Award

At today's Tribune Company annual meeting, Tribune gave its Tribune Values Award (heh heh) to three Chicago Magazine suits: Editor Dick Babcock, Publisher Randy Hano, and Rich Gamble, director of finance and operations. We have to agree. Ever since Tribune bought Chicago Magazine five years ago, the magazine has dutifully promoted Tribune Values... and Tribune assets (Coincidentally, Editor Babcock is a Cubs fan). And it's a real testament to Chicago Magazine's soulsale adoption of Tribune advertorial synergies that the editorial department is sharing the honor with the guys who keep the books.

A Slight Acquaintance with Ethics

Today New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley discloses in a review that he knows Joan Didion, the author whose memoir and life inspired the play Brantley is reviewing.

Brantley writes, "For the record I have a slight social acquaintance with Ms. Didion." A slight social acquaintance. At moments like these I can't help but think of our own small-town rag, The Chicago Tribune, which printed an 8,000-word series about a Field Museum project without disclosing that managing editor James O'Shea was married to the Field Museum's publicist, or that president of Tribune publishing Jack Fuller was dating a Field Museum scientist featured in the series.

The Tribune is Dirty. It's as dirty as an El station elevator. I don't know how they can still deny it. The evidence is overwhelming. We object to this sort of thing routinely on this page, because it happens so often with the Cubs. The examples are preserved in print for ethicists to study in the Tribune autopsies of the future:

Tribune Architecture Critic Blair Kamin writing an absurdly saccharine review of the new bleachers at Wrigley Field — without disclosing that he is directly invested in that building, not just as an employee of the company that owns it, but as a stockholder. (Because Tribune employees receive Tribune stock in their benefits).

Tribune Business Correspondent David W. Greising writing that the White Sox aren't as "big" as the Cubs just days after the Sox won the World Series — without disclosing that he is directly invested in the baseball market, not just as an employee of the company that owns the Cubs, but as a stockholder.

Chicago Magazine Editor Richard Babcock steering tourists to Wrigley Field in the magazine's tourism edition — but wait, there's more — and steering those who can't get a ticket to his own office building, the Tribune Store in the Tribune Tower, to buy a Cubs cap to wear while watching the game on television (on WGN, no doubt) — without disclosing that he is directly invested in the Cubs, not just as an employee of the company that owns them, but as a stockholder.

"But wait!" the suits are howling, in their joint offices in the Tribune Tower, "Chicago Magazine is different from the Chicago Tribune!"

If only it were. It's all one big ethically-compromised monolith of mediocrity. Consider:

WGN reporter Muriel Clair producing a "news" segment about Careerbuilder's new ad campaign right before the campaign's Super Bowl debut, without disclosing that both WGN and Careerbuilder are owned by the Tribune Company, meaning that Clair is invested in Careerbuilder, not just as an employee of the company that owns it, but as a stockholder. The unethical report was then repeated on Tribune-owned CLTV and embedded on the front page of chicagotribune.com. It's all one big ethically-compromised monolith of mediocrity.

Dirtier than the doormat it lands on.