Monday, October 21, 2002
Why I stopped reading the Chicago Tribune. I didn't grow up in Chicago, so I don’t have the sentimental attachment to the newspaper that many lifelong residents do. I moved here in the 80s, and gave up on the paper in the 90s, thanks to better national distribution of The New York Times and a newfangled thingamabob called the Internet (thanks, Al Gore!).
Sunday I picked up a Tribune to see what, if anything, I was missing. Here are excerpts from the lead article in the Business section by a staff reporter (Robert Manor) on the local economy:
- Random, representative phrases: bad news… downright dismal… not much comfort to investors and workers… loss of confidence in stock markets… difficult for companies to raise capital… crippled the airlines and other industries…
- Motorola Inc. warned that sales for the coming year would be weak, sending its stock price to a 10-year-low.
- Boeing Co. lost a $6 billion order for 120 planes to European rival Airbus. It's now in danger of of losing its status as the world's largest aircraft manufacturer.
- Shares of Sears, Roebuck and Co. tumbled 32 percent after the retailer disclosed… [etc.]
What's so remarkable about this article? The editor's input — the headline. Chicago economy not all bad. Huh?
Oh, right, mentioning the obvious (the deteriorating US pawn shop economy) is bad for Republicans on November 5.
Elsewhere on the Editorial page you'll find the requisite endorsement for the Republican senatorial candidate, the name-soundalike Durkin who is the challenger to Democratic incumbent Durbin. This endorsement falls neatly into line with every other überparty endorsement they've made (Dole in 1996, etc.).
The neat juxtaposition of news with contradictory headlines that are designed to support their Republican endorsements is a Tribune calling card.
You would think that a city the size and importance of Chicago would have a newspaper of proportional importance, but it doesn't. The scrappy Chicago Sun-Times is often quite good but its physical production is awful. The Tribune has the money but not the will to produce a paper that doesn't suck. This is a paper that screams, "I exist only as a pretext to deliver these ads and Best Buy inserts to you."
Some other day I'll go into everything else that bugs me about the Tribune (which will remain unlinked): the low quality of the prose, the design, and the appalling arts coverage. In a word, yecch.
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Greatest Hits
· Alternatives to First Command Financial Planning
· First Command, last resort, Part 3
· Part 2
· Part 1
· Stealing $50K from a widow: Wells Real Estate
· Leo Wells, REITs and divine wealth
· Sex-crazed Red State teenagers
· What I hate: a manifesto
· Spawn of Darleen Druyun
· All-American high school sex party
· Why is Ken Lay smiling?
· Poppy's Enron birthday party
· The Saudi money laundry and the president's uncle
· The sentence of Enron's John Forney
· The holiness of Neil Bush's marriage
· The Silence of Cheney: a poem
· South Park Christians
· Capitalist against Bush: Warren Buffett
· Fastow childen vs. Enron children
· Give your prescription money to your old boss
· Neil Bush, hard-working matchmaker
· Republicans against fetuses and pregnant women
· Emboldened Ken Lay
· Faith-based jails
· Please die for me so I can skip your funeral
· A brief illustrated history of the Republican Party
· Nancy Victory
· Soldiers become accountants
· Beware the Merrill Lynch mob
· Darleen Druyun's $5.7 billion surprise
· First responder funding
· Hoovering the country
· First Command fifty percent load
· Ken Lay and the Atkins diet
· Halliburton WMD
· Leave no CEO behind
· August in Crawford
· Elaine Pagels
· Profitable slave labor at Halliburton
· Tom Hanks + Mujahideen
· Sharon & Neilsie Bush
· One weekend a month, or eternity
· Is the US pumping Iraqi oil to Kuwait?
· Cheney's war
· Seth Glickenhaus: Capitalist against Bush
· Martha's blow job
· Mark Belnick: Tyco Catholic nut
· Cheney's deferred Halliburton compensation
· Jeb sucks sugar cane
· Poindexter & LifeLog
· American Family Association panic
· Riley Bechtel and the crony economy
· The Book of Sharon (Bush)
· The Art of Enron
· Plunder convention
· Waiting in Kuwait: Jay Garner
· What's an Army private worth?
· Barbara Bodine, Queen of Baghdad
· Sneaky bastards at Halliburton
· Golf course and barbecue military strategy
· Enron at large
· Recent astroturf
· Cracker Chic 2
· No business like war business
· Big Brother
· Martha Stewart vs. Thomas White
· Roger Kimball, disappointed Republican poetry fan
· Cheney, Lay, Afghanistan
· Terry Lynn Barton, crimes of burning
· Feasting at the Cheney trough
· Who would Jesus indict?
· Return of the Carlyle Group
· Duct tape is for little people
· GOP and bad medicine
· Sears Tower vs Mt Rushmore
· Scared Christians
· Crooked playing field
· John O'Neill: The man who knew
· Back to the top
 
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