Chicago Daily Observer

You want wild; You want edgy; You want a Cynthia McKinney to read over the Cruller and Coffee; You want Mary Mitchell!

Mary Mitchell and Green POTUS candidate Cynthia McKinney will give you a wild, edgy perspective on anything. McKinney is a 9/11 theorist, demands that the sealed records on the late Tupac Shakur become public, called the impeachment of G.W.Bush, and is a cop hater. Here Congressional District tossed McKinney, who was no Zell Miller, and McKinney found a snug fit in the Green Party.

The Chicago Sun Times eight-sixed edgy and wild editor Cheryl Reed when the Chicago newspaper took a seventy degree plunge in sales last year. However, the main mast for edgy, wild, perspective of columnist Mary Mitchell keeps the course.

We learned a little bit more about Barack Obama’s meetings with the city’s editorial boards to discuss Tony Rezko on Chicago Tonight Monday night. Carol Marin moderated. The panel: Investigative reporter David Jackson and deputy editorial page editor John McCormick from the Tribune and reporter Chris Fusco and editorial writer Deborah Douglas from the Sun-Times. Let’s take a look.

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(Direct quotes will be in quote marks; the rest is from my notes but pretty close to verbatim.)

MARIN: Why did Obama do this now?

JACKSON: The Tribune “was preparing to run a story in Sunday’s paper that listed the unanswered questions.”

Let the breakup begin for Sun-Times Media Group Inc.

Piecemeal sale of the publisher of the city’s No. 2 newspaper is the likely outcome after the struggling company on Monday said it was entertaining selling any or all of its assets, plus joint ventures or partnerships.

Industry analysts say few bidders are likely to want the company’s entire portfolio, which includes the Chicago Sun-Times and a string of weekly and daily papers in the suburbs.

The suburban papers could attract greater interest from potential acquirers, says industry analyst John Morton, president of Morton Research Inc. in Silver Spring, Md.

In perhaps the shortest tenure of any editorial board editor in my memory, the Sun-Times’ chief opinion-maker, Cheryl Reed, has quit, and not without cause.

According to her, newspaper management inappropriately fiddled with the paper’s editorial endorsements of Barack Obama and John McCain, without telling her. I would have quit too (I served on the Sun-Times editorial board for 22 years), but not for the high-and-mighty, ego-inflating reason offered by Reed. To me, it would have been a clear signal by the publisher and owner that they had lost confidence in me, and it was time to go. The failure to collaborate on changes made in copy is something that’s done to rookie reporters, not editorial page editors. The message from management to Reed was simple and clear: You blew it.

But, instead of being embarrassed by this rebuke, she has turned this reproach into a badge of martyrdom. In ... Read More...

The Sun-Times gets to dump another salary—Cheryl Reed, the editorial page editor, has quit, and quite spectacularly.

A couple of weeks ago I heard that she’d turned in her resignation—she couldn’t have been a happy camper after layoffs cost her about half her staff. But she was talked out of it (by publisher Cyrus Freidheim himself), and editor in chief Michael Cooke issued a memo telling the staff to ignore the rumors: “She’s with us for the battle.”

Sun-Times Media Group. Inc. said late Monday that directors are weighing a number of “strategic alternatives,” including a possible sale of the struggling Chicago publishing concern.

The board’s decision to “explore strategic next steps” is “the right thing to do the ensure the future of the Sun-Times Media Group publications and Web sites and to generate the highest value for our shareholders,” said Cyrus Freidheim, the holding company’s Chief Executive Officer.

In case you missed the Daily Herald story about an independent board being set up to manage Cook County Hospitals, or if you are not a Crain’s subscriber (the story, while on the front page of the print edition, is not freely available online, nor via syndication), you might have missed one of the biggest developments in Cook County.

Cook County Hospitals are the biggest line item on the county budget. The Tribune and Sun Times have mercilessly (and perhaps justifiably) pounded away at the Stroger administration’s mis-manangement. One might ask, if mis-management is something new in the healthcare industry, but Trib and Sun-Times have put a lot of ink to explaining how Todd Stroger has botched things up, something that we might assume was not the case in the previous administration, given the new found dedication of the Trib/Sun-Times to muckrakery about 1900 Polk.

Perhaps overwhelmed by promotion ... Read More...

Sun-Times Media Group has let go four newsroom staff at the Naperville Sun, plans to cut eight editorial positions from the Post-Tribune in Gary, Ind., and has sacked the co-editors at its newly merged SouthtownStar as it presses forward on a plan to chop $50 million in expenses in the .

Someone has to save the Sun-Times.

Someone who cares about Chicago and journalism and integrity. Not like the recent set of incompetents and crooks that have sent the newspaper into what increasingly looks like a death spiral.

Chicago must not only keep two newspapers, but two good newspapers. Chicago cannot pretend to be a world-class city without two—no more than it can expect to capture the Olympics with a creaking, busted CTA.

The Sun-Times and its sister newspapers are cutting $50 million, about 11 percent of its expenses, in the coming half year. The Sun-Times itself last week started to ax about 20 percent of its newsroom staff. Business editor Dan Miller, seeing the darkness approaching, resigned—an ominous portent for sure. Having worked with Miller at the old Chicago Daily News, I know that he should be running the entire paper, not leaving it. With all this, putting out ... Read More...

How long will it be before “The Chicago Sun-Times” ceases publication?

Judging from recent events, the end cannot be too far off. In addition to gutting its staff and eliminating the business section, the tabloid paper has been struggling to stave off insolvency by filling its pages with sleaze. How else can one explain the editorial decision to run another article about the narcissistic divorce attorney Corri D. Fetman?

Fetman, you may recall succeeded in embarrassing feminists and scandalizing the legal community by promoting her divorce law practice by posting a series of provocative billboard advertisements featuring scantily clad models and the caption that “Life’s Short. Get A Divorce.” The controversial and tacky advertisements managed to offend many people, men and women alike.

In one of the most salutary acts in his lengthy public career, former 42nd Ward Alderman Burton Natarus had Fetman’s tasteless and offensive billboards removed. The advertising ... Read More...

With 2008 being the Chinese Year of the Rat, it seems fitting to gnaw through the Chicken-Wire Curtain built by the Chicago Media and break out stories that have been either ignored or suppressed by the major newspapers and broadcast outlets. Here are the top picks of the Chicago Daily Observer Editors for Most Underreported Stories of 2007

1) Richard Caro vs. Rod Blagojevich. As you might guess from our coverage, this one is a layup. The major media (save Dennis Byrne) has completely ignored this important constitutional case pitting Lawyer Richard Caro, Businessman Ron Gidwitz, and Attorney General Lisa Madigan against Governor Rod Blagojevich in Cook County Court, hashing out the powers of the Illinois Executive, with good deal of Chicago Style political intrigue being played out via the courts system.

2) Major changes at Chicago’s Airports. Given Chicago’s long history as the transportation hub of the United States, ... Read More...

s the year ends, a time to reflect . . .

Former CEO Dennis FitzSimons, who gave the Tribune Company 25 years, just walked out the door Sam Zell held open with a package worth $38.3 million in severance and stock. The sums bandied about in civil litigation were vastly larger, but in the end Conrad Black was convicted of stealing $6.1 million from Hollinger International and he just got six and a half years in prison. Maybe he should have fired himself instead.

Newspapers are dead. They didn’t have to be, but their window of opportunity closed long ago.— Steve Rhodes, Beachwood Reporter, a blog.

“I’m sick and tired of listening to everybody talk about and commiserate over the end of newspapers. They ain’t ended, they’re not going to end and I think they have a great future.” – Sam Zell, new Tribune Co. boss.

My money is on Sam. And my apologies to Zell for mentioning Rhodes in the same breathe.

Rhodes apparently doesn’t catch the irony of pronouncing newspapers DOA, while he fuels his blog with daily rants about…newspapers. If Rhodes is right that the papers already are dead, I guess that means he’s living off a cadaver.

But Rhodes isn’t alone. He appeared on a recent WTTW-TV Chicago Tonight panel dissecting the industry’s supposed death throes. But as Mark Twain might have advised, it’s always dangerous to pronounce ... Read More...

To their credit, the Springfield State Journal Register is carrying the story of yesterday’s dismissal of the Ron Gidwitz/Illinois Coalition for Jobs case vs. Barry Maram and Dan Hynes challenging Governor Blagojevich’s unilateral spending allocations.

The Tribune has not noticed the dismissal, though they did cover the case itself twice, while the Sun-Times carried neither the case nor the dismissal.

None of the two Chicago newspapers have reported the existence of Richard Caro case vs. Governor Blagojevich, though the SJ-R references the case, without context.

It will be interesting to see how if the Tribune decides to carry any information about the Caro case, as the reason for the dismissal of the Gidwitz case was that the Caro case is already pending.

Given that the Tribune has refused to acknowledge the existence of the Caro case, how will they explain the dismissal? Such a dilemma when you are ignoring the ... Read More...

Good for the Southtown!

Among political columnists who are fun to read I like Peggy Noonan in the “Wall Street Journal”…because she is a brilliant wordsmith (although I have detected a taste of sour grapes about the Republicans who apparently, and foolishly, passed her up for White House director of communications). But she is an absolute marvel to read. She appears in the WSJ every Saturday. The imagery is about as clever as that of Maureen Dowd another of my favorites but far more sophisticated.

Locally I have been avidly reading Kristen McQueary (and as result asked her to be on my WLS-AM radio show yesterday). She has a realistic and properly skeptical view of the process without being unduly cynical. I particularly liked….didn’t necessarily agree with but liked…her column last week on Judy Biggert the multi-millionaire Republican congresswoman who has a cushy federal medical benefit as all ... Read More...

Hey Abdon! Who Lied and Made You Boss? !!! A Reporter’s Privilege

Nothing to read at Kean Gas station at 111th & Talman this morning – Gino Ford grabbed the last Daily Southtown and Dawna said that Sunday edition wouldn’t be in until about 11AM. The Kean dark roast was still slowdripping.

Against Dr. Vargas’ orders – I picked up the Sun Times ( HOWLS OF DERISIVE LAUGHTER emitted by your your humble servant) – The Progressive-Independent Conscious of the City that ‘s better than endless Seinfeld loops on two competing channels.