Posts Tagged ‘chicago tribune’

Journalism’s “extinction event” will lead to new and better choices for news

Posted: February 4, 2024 by John Ruberry in blogs, business, culture, internet/free speech, media, News/opinion, opinion/news
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

Big News is having a bad time of it. Paul Farhi, who accepted a buyout from the Washington Post, asked in the Atlantic–a magazine that is propped up by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs–“Is American Journalism Headed Toward an ‘Extinction-Level Event?'”

With massive layoffs not only at the Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, but also the Los Angeles Times–and with Sports Illustrated being probably as dead as the Detroit Lions’ Super Bowl dreams–the answer may be a loud “Yes.” 

Meanwhile, in Democrat-controlled Illinois, the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force, created by legislation in 2021, is betting on the dinosaurs, that is, traditional media. Last week, the task force issued its recommendations for journalism in the Prairie State.

“Its proposals are mostly about getting taxpayers to pony up and putting government in control,” Mark Glennon says in Wirepoints, “[with] no mention of journalism’s own failures.”

Indeed, there are many failures. The glaringly obvious one–unless you work in mainstream media–is that journalists are pushing a narrative to score love from the 20 percent of the population who are far-leftists. Even in Illinois, a blue state, there are not many ultra lefties–they might make up 25 percent of the populace here.

Among the recommendations from the tax force include a whole slew of tax credits for local news sources, including for subscriptions, businesses who advertise with them, as well as for local news providers hiring reporters.

Every one of the recommendations from the task force are wretched ideas that I could eviscerate easily one by one, but to save time, I’ll move on. But not yet. Besides these tax credits, the task force recommends exempting local news sources from Illinois’ corporate income tax. 

Some states have no corporate income tax.

News should be a mass market product, not a niche offering, but the liberals in charge have turned it into that. Again, I’ll be brief. Most Americans–and yes, most Illinoisans–believe there are only two genders, and most had doubts about the COVID propaganda of 2020-21. And most of them are fed up with the lamestream media minimizing the ongoing crisis with rampant crime.

Yeah, I get it, the internet has hurt local news providers. But they didn’t adapt. The same with Big News.

Let’s talk about extinction events. Real ones. Extinction is usually portrayed as mass death, yet it’s also a mass life event. 

Following the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, the lystrosaurus, a runt buck-toothed freak reptile, thrived, along with many other emergent species. Soon, geologically speaking that is, came the dinosaurs. After the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, different small animals, mammals and birds among them–as well as fungus–prospered.

There’s never been more media–or more information–than there is now. Print newspapers are sometimes called dinosaur media.  I believe they should always be named as such. Among the new media are of course blogs such as this one, YouTube and Rumble video channels, streaming services, podcasts, and so much more. A consumer of information is now faced with a daunting challenge. Because finding enough time to sift through all of the choices–let alone absorb all of them–is impossible. 

Last Thursday, Chicago Tribune reporters held a one-day strike against its owner, Alden Capital, a hedge fund firm. “We often say, ‘Newspapers are not dying, they’re being killed,'” Gregory Pratt, a committed left-wing Trib journalist, told WGN-TV. 

Wrong, Pratt. Newspapers are being killed because journalists are emitting an unpopular product and looking down on their customers.

Let’s return to the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force. 

In its rancid report there is a map of Illinois. Counties with few media choices are marked in that map in different shades of red. One of those is McHenry, which is northwest of Chicago. I know of two great news sites reporting about McHenry County: Cal Skinner’s McHenry County Blog and the Lake and McHenry County Scanner–a suburban answer to the phenomenally successful CWB Chicago. I’m certain that the task force didn’t include these sites in their elitist media tally. 

Another fabulous Illinois news source is the aforementioned Wirepoints.

Big creatures usually don’t survive natural mass extinction events. Small ones, nimble animals, find opportunities in an altered world.

Remember, lystrosaurus made way for larger and grander beasts, such as the Tyrannosaurus rex. Today’s blog may become tomorrow’s News Corp–the parent company of Fox News, Dow Jones, HarperCollins, and so many more.

Humans will always crave information–it’s in our DNA–it is just a matter of how it’s delivered to us. We’ve come a very long away from when the evening news was a caveman squatting in front of a bonfire telling whoever was sitting in front of him how that day’s hunt went. If that prehistoric anchorman delivered fake news–“I killed six mammoths today with my bare hands!”–his audience simply walked away. Kind of like what consumers of Big News are doing now.

The dinosaur media–and the Illinois Journalism Task Force–doesn’t get it.

John Ruberry blogs regularly from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

Do journalists have ethical standards anymore? Overlooked story about a Chicago Tribune reporter gives me doubts

Posted: April 30, 2023 by John Ruberry in culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

Late in 2021, the father of Chicago Tribune City Hall reporter Gregory Pratt, died. Father and son shared the same name, but the younger Pratt hadn’t seen his dad since he was five. That is, until shortly before the passing of the older Pratt, which the reporter, in a behind-the-pay-wall column, movingly wrote about in the Tribune. 

Last week, the Chicago City Wire, a newspaper often dismissed as “fake” and “pink slime” by liberals, noticed something in Pratt’s column, a link to a GoFundMe page organized by a cousin for the reporter, to defray the senior Pratt’s medical bills, That GoFundMe link should have immediately raised eyebrows. But it was the “fake” source that got the scoop.

The Chicago Tribune’s lead City Hall reporter Gregory Pratt solicited and received at least $1,790 in donations in a GoFundMe.com fundraiser benefiting his family from sources he covers– including elected officials, political consultants and lobbyists.

The donors included Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who gave him $150, along with Evelyn Chinea-García, the wife of recent mayoral candidate, U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia ($500) and former Illinois Deputy Governor and State Attorney General candidate Jesse Ruiz ($100).

Three members of the Chicago City Council Pratt covers – Ald. Gil Villegas (36th), Ald. Samantha Nugent (39th) and Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th)– also contributed to Pratt, along with Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner and lobbyist Michael Alvarez ($250) and Chicago political operatives Rebecca Carroll, Eli Stone, Carolyn Grisko and Joanna Klonsky, who recently worked for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Chicago City Wire, and several other papers, are published by Local Government Information Services, which was founded by conservative activist and WIND-AM radio personality Dan Proft in 2016.

I wrote about these publications here at Da Tech Guy last year.

A Twitter fight between Proft and Pratt ensued, which led former Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass to respond in the comments thread, “When a news organization gives editorial control to billionaire Bolshevik like George Soros, that news organization has no credibility. Any comment @chicagotribune @CTGuild @royalpratt???

Kass’ referral to @CTGuild is in regard to the Chicago Tribune Guild, the union representing Trib reporters. It is the organization that fought with the longtime conservative columnist at the Tribune over a 2020 column highly critical of Kim Foxx–you know, Jussie Smollett’s protector–where Kass brings up how Foxx and other big city Democratic catch-and-release prosecutors are funded by leftist billionaire George Soros. The Guild, of which Kass was not a member, in a biased manner deemed that column as anti-Semitic. The Guild’s protest led to a de facto demotion for Kass.

Pratt, whose Twitter handle is @royalpratt, displays the Chicago Tribune Guild logo on his Twitter page. 

As legendary baseball announcer Mel Allen used to say, “How about that?”

To be fair, for all I know, Kass and Pratt are best pals. Then again, probably not.

Proft and Kass’ objections to the GoFundMe linkage are fair. Could those donors who work in politics, and who Pratt is expected to cover without bias, expect more sympathetic coverage if he knows they contributed to his dad’s GoFundMe page?

I don’t know.

Here’s what the New York Times, on its ethics page, says about possible improprieties.

Personal relations with sources: Relationships with sources require the utmost in sound judgment and self discipline to prevent the fact or appearance of partiality. Cultivating sources is an essential skill, often practiced most effectively in informal settings outside of normal business hours. Yet staff members, especially those assigned to beats, must be sensitive that personal relationships with news sources can erode into favoritism, in fact or appearance. And conversely staff members must be aware that sources are eager to win our good will for reasons of their own.

Which brings me to beat reporting. Years ago, the Trib used to move around reporters in a seemingly bizarre fashion. For instance, Bruce Buursma went from the religion beat to covering the Chicago White Sox. Such transfers create more-rounded journalists –and since Chicago’s two baseball teams went nearly a century for one–and over a century for the other–between World Series titles, a faith reporter might have been just what baseball fans reading the Tribune needed at that time.

Sadly, for reporters coving elected officials, mostly but not exclusively on the left, politics is their religion. They are not journalists, they’re activists playing on the same team.

Here’s one more old story. Jay McMullen, who later married Chicago mayor Jane Byrne, was for over twenty years was the City Hall reporter for the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times. Eventually his bosses viewed McMullen as being too cozy with the pols he covered–so he was exiled to the real estate page. McMullen later worked for his wife during her single term in office.

Note: Two days ago, I emailed Gregory Pratt about my intention to write a blog post about the GoFundMe page controversy. I received an out-of-office reply that suggested I contact another person. As of the evening of April 30, I have not received a non-automated response from either of them.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

My idea for subscribers to save some newspapers and magazines and protect conservative voices

Posted: November 29, 2020 by John Ruberry in business, media, News/opinion, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

More than once President Donald Trump–and as most recently as this morning in a telephone interview with Maria Bartiromo–President Donald J. Trump has called with media “the enemy of the people.”

And for the most part he is correct. On the national side most writers are propagandists for the left. Things are slightly better on the local level, which the president noted in that discussion with Bartiromo. After all only local TV stations were pressing Joe Biden during the presidential campaign about whether he’d pack the court with liberal justices. This is a very serious issue as it would upend and transform one of the three branches of the federal government. Eventually Biden, like a typical liberal, punted the decision by announcing he’d form a committee to explore issues of injustices in the legal system. And the elite media once again practiced the sin of omission in their reporting.

Last year Warren Buffett–although excluding the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal–said of newspapers, “They’re going to disappear.” And this year Buffett disappeared from the newspaper business. 

Old line magazines such as New York, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker are dominated by left-wing journalists. You know, the smug-elitists who got their jobs by way of nepotism and their attendance at an elite university, which probably admitted them because of one of their parents also attended that college. Actually these publications might not have any conservative writers. The last one, the New Yorker, offers a newstand price of $8.99. In my opinion it’s not worth 99 cents. All are behind an internet paywall. All of these publications are intellectually irredeemable and likely doomed to insolvency. 

Let’s get back to newspapers. I cancelled my print subscription to the Chicago Tribune years ago and although I toyed with the idea of subscribing online,being the enterprising sort I learned that the only thing, outside of an occasional sports story, that I cared to read in the Tribune was John Kass’ column, which I discovered I could find on other newspapers sites or Real Clear Politics for free. 

Buffett is right. Newspapers are dead men walking. And magazines. Mostly. Oh, Chicago’s other major daily newspaper, which was purchased by a consortium a few years ago that included the Chicago Federal of Labor for $1, isn’t going to make it. You can bet on it. 

The Tribune, once a strong conservative voice in heavily Democratic Chicago, has been drifting lefward for years. Now it’s “woke.” Except for columnist John Kass. And the Trib is a shell of its former self. Like Warren Buffett–and here the similarities between us end–I’m a former newspaper delivery boy. I hated Thanksgiving Day editions because the papers were jammed with Christmas shopping ads–making the delivery of those bulky papers take three times as long. I have this year’s Thanksgiving Day Tribune lying right next to me. It’s thinner than the Saturday editions–a low readership and therefore a low-advertising day–that I used to deliver. 

Here’s my idea for saving and perhaps transforming daily newspapers and magazines out of the liberal echo chamber that they are now. For instance, the cost of a Tribune subscription, once the promos end, is $3.99 a month. For a dollar more you can have the print edition delivered to your door too. Now, and union rules may have to be changed for this to happen, but I propose for subscribers to have one-quarter of their subscription fee to go directly to the columnist of their choice. If there’s a sports writer or a movie reviewer who you really like, then of course choose that person. And of course I have all newspapers, magazines, and online-only publications in mind. 

My selection at the Tribune would of course be John Kass, a strong conservative voice who suffered a demotion of sorts by seeing his column moved from the coveted page 2 location to the innards of opinion section. The impetus for that move was a rebellion by his leftist co-workers about a column explaining how George Soros funded the campaigns of far-left prosecutors such as Kim Foxx in Cook County, Illinois. Those propagandists called Kass’ column anti-Semitic, even though Kass never mentioned the faith of Soros in that article. Soros is a secular Jew, not a religous one, by the way. Kass was attacked by his colleagues not because he was wrong about Soros–but because he was right.

Kass on a personal level is the antithesis of the media elites of you find elsewhere on the Tribune or at the New York Times and the Atlantic and their ilk. He attended–but did not graduate from–Columbia. That is Columbia College in Chicago, which my daughter once also attended, not the “other” Columbia in New York. The mainstream media of of course is always calling for more diversity within its ranks. But never for more intellectual diversity. Or class diversity. 

So my proposal has two obvious merits. It can save newspapers and it can up the conservative presence at the legacy media. Before it becomes the extinct media. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit and is available for hire by a legacy media publication.

Race, politics, and the English language

Posted: August 2, 2020 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, media, News/opinion, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

Last month the Chicago Tribune’s lead columnist, John Kass, penned a column about left-wing billionaire George Soros and his funding of campaigns of Democratic prosecutors such as Cook County’s Kim Foxx–who can rightly be called soft-on-crime. Despite a state of Illinois threshold of $300, Foxx won’t prosecute accused shoplifters unless they steal merchandise worth more than $1,000. Even before this spring’s rioting and looting in Chicago, shoplifting was on the rise.

Criminals appear to be emboldened in Chicago–as the consequences for illegal activities diminish, people believe they can get away with more crimes. Think of it as the opposite of the “broken windows” theory of law enforcement. While I admit it could be a leap to equate Foxx’s permissive attitude on prosecution of crimes to an even more violent Chicago, but shootings and murders for July, 2020 were up dramatically from the previous July. Still I believe Foxx bears some of the responsibility. While the suits in the Chicago Police Department are claiming overall crime is down, I suspect shell game chicanery or something even more troubling. It could be that fewer crimes are being reported because victims believe that it won’t make a difference. The victims know, with minor crimes, Foxx won’t prosecute.

And what about more serious crimes?

In that controversial piece, Kass opined, “And in many of the violent cities, the prosecutors have delivered on their promises not to keep the violent in jail but rather to let them out.”

Kass’ column brought about a fierce backlash by the Chicago Tribune Guild, a union that Kass does not belong to, calling that piece an “odious, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that billionaire George Soros is a puppet master controlling America’s big cities.”

That column led to a demotion of sorts from Kass. After over twenty years of his column being placed on Page 2, a halcyon spot once occupied by the legendary Mike Royko, Kass’ column has been moved, by the Trib’s editor-in-chief Colin McMahon to the opinion section, in order to, in his words “maintain credibility of news coverage.” That’s not a credible statement as I’m certain there are very few people who see Kass’ work as anything but opinion.

In that column about Soros, Kass did not mention the billionaire’s faith or ethnic origin. I’m going to be more direct. Kass didn’t say in that piece that Soros is Jewish.

On his Daily Herald blog about the Kass battle, Robert Feder, a longtime media reporter, referred to him as the “Chicago Tribune’s white male conservative standard-bearer.”

Whoah. Let me repeat that, the “Chicago Tribune’s white male conservative standard-bearer.”

I remarked on my own blog:

Replace “white” with black and “male” with female. And of course “conservative” with liberal. Do you think if Fraud Feder wrote that about an African-American writer at the Trib who is a woman that he would have gotten away with it?

Of course he wouldn’t have.

Which reminds me of something I read in high school from George Orwell. Not Animal Farm or 1984, but his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language.

This line stands out from that classic: “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.'” Contemporary liberals, and especially leftists, reflexively label their critics as “fascists.”

I’m sure there is a Kass column over the years, none currently come to mind however, where in my opinion he was totally wrong. Any attacks on that theoretical opinion piece from me, correctly, should be on refuting his points with facts, or at least reasoned thoughts. Not, as some people might, retorting that Kass is wrong because he’s a white man, or that he benefits from “white privilege” and “systemic racism.”

Is white becoming, in Orwell’s words, “something not desirable?” Or worse, something that is inherently wrong?

Conveniently, at least for this post, Kass is of Greek descent. Much if not most of classical logic comes from the ancient Greeks. Oh, let’s say Kass is a Filipino-American. I’d still make the same points you’ll see next.

In college I took a logic course–and seriously–it may have held me back in the work force. I guess I’m too logical. There are a number of argumentative fallacies that the ancient Greeks identified, including the “fallacy of origins,” now generally called the “genetic fallacy.”

Here’s what Purdue’s Online Writing Lab offers on this subject:

Genetic Fallacy: This conclusion is based on an argument that the origins of a person, idea, institute, or theory determine its character, nature, or worth. Example:

The Volkswagen Beetle is an evil car because it was originally designed by Hitler’s army.

In this example the author is equating the character of a car with the character of the people who built the car. However, the two are not inherently related.

So, if the Chicago Tribune Guild wished to honestly attack Kass, they should have pointed out where they believe Kass is wrong about Soros and his funding of campaigns of Democratic prosecutors. They didn’t. They responded with another logical fallacy, the ad hominem attack, calling him anti-Semitic.

The Chicago Tribune Guild couldn’t, or was to lazy to, argue with Kass’ Soros column on its merits. Or lack of.

Feder in his blog post deemed it necessary to mention Kass’ race, gender, and political philosophy in explaining the columnist’s demotion.

That path angered me, so much so that for my Marathon Pundit post about Feder’s attack I used this headline, “Leftist Daily Herald blogger Robert Feder calls columnist John Kass ‘Chicago Tribune’s white male conservative standard-bearer.'” Okay, I admit, I don’t know if Feder is really a leftist but such a verbal assault is something leftists do now. Apparently stung, he accused me of “faux outrage” on Twitter.

But the outrage is real.

Using one’s race, faith, lack-of-faith, ethnic background, sexual identity and the like as a means of argumentative attack is something until recently I thought was a relic of a more ignorant era, or the denizen of crude online forums. Or the weapon of drunken barroom rants.

Our society is headed the wrong way. 

And if white people are today’s bogey man tomorrow it may another group. Movements with absolutist philosophies eventually eat their own. See the French Revolution. Or the Russian Revolution.

The “cancel culture” may be coming for you.

Kass is a brave man who is not backing down, as he explained in another column last week.

While Voltaire never said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” he should have. Because it’s a noble sentiment I believe in. And no one is always right. Yep, not even me. Not John Kass either. No political philosophy has the solution to every problem. We need each other.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.