Tribune: All the News that Makes Us Richer

On page 5 of the Tempo section in today's Tribune we find a charming feature about some people who built a one-third-size replica of Wrigley Field in Freeport, IL. But we don't know anything about those people except for one name — Denny Garkey — and the word "organizers." And the story doesn't tell us anything about the community that hosts the field. Instead of emphasizing the people who built this field or the community in which they built it, the Tribune predictably emphasizes itself. That is to say, it emphasizes its own assets, without disclosing that they are assets, and at a time, we note, when those assets are for sale.

The first paragraph, ostensibly describing the mini-field, mentions the Cubs, Wrigley Field, the "Friendly Confines," the green scoreboard, the red marquee sign, and the WGN press box. Need we remind you that Tribune owns WGN?

The second paragraph mentions a person, Dutchie Caray, whom it describes as "the widow of famed Cubs announcer Harry Caray." If the Tribune didn't constantly promote its selective memory of Harry's biography, he might be more appropriately described as the larger Chicago area actually remembers him: "famed White Sox and Cubs announcer Harry Caray."

The third paragraph mentions those anonymous "organizers" of the new field in the course of getting to another mention of Tribune-owned Wrigley Field. Did we mention it's for sale?

And then, best of all, the final paragraph is devoted to the billy goat curse, the Tribune's favorite strategy, for the last quarter century, to attract fans to a losing team. The lovable losers, cursed by a goat.

The story hardly manages to be about its topic — the miniature field — at all, and never gets around to asking the "organizers" why they built it, how they raised the money, how the community has reacted, etc.

And most importantly, the story never discloses that the Tribune owns the assets it is describing, despite ethical codes and a Tribune policy requiring such a disclosure. Why is it important to include such a disclosure in such a cute little feature story? Because as a Tribune editorial recently admitted, "The future of our parent company—conceivably, the future of our jobs—rests to some unknowable extent on the successful sale of the Cubs and Wrigley Field, and the resulting reduction of corporate debt. "

-- Patrick Sheehan

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.