Tribune hacks and slashes and gouges

The Good Doctor prescribes:

-30-

 

What we will never know is the number of people the Tribune and other newspapers in its group would have laid off by now had the old ownership never sold to Zell. Fewer, of course, but how many fewer?

And we'll also never know in how much better shape, before the economy tanked, the Sun-Times would have been in had Black and Radler not been systematically looting that company. Certainly, that newsroom would have been bigger if Black and Radler were on the square.

Chicago print journalism is in tatters. You could start a hell of a good paper with the people let go by the Tribune and Sun-Times group papers. The Herald, too.

 

Walter Burns wept.

 

I'll make that a reservation for a shitload of folk, plus one, SP ...

 

Hey ... what's with the pot shot at agate clerks, SP?

 

I'm sure someone will post the kitty in the tin-foil hat as a response to this but here goes anyway . . .

I don't think that Zell is doing this because of some slight. I DO think there's a chance that Zell and other super-rich conservatives are buying up newspapers and eviscerating them so that they won't be around to investigate the kind of crap that went on during W's watch and the stuff that corporations would like to be able to get away with now. The Washington press corps is a shell of what it used to be. Big papers that used to have 50 or more people in D.C. are down to 15 or so. Small papers and groups have completely closed their bureaus. Papers that used to have two or three people at city hall now have one. Industries aren't being covered like they used to be. This fits right into the wishes of people like Zell and Murdoch and others, who know that the less daylight shed on their inner workings and on the politicians they control, the more short-term profits they can rake in.

(Steps down, waits quietly for the rubber-lined truck to take him to the special hospital)

 

Yes, that's why they axed their Illinois beat writer. Bruce Weber might know something about black ops.

 

Hey, BBAM: Not intending to rip agate clerks. Just trying to think of the worst job I could. Feel free to do me worse.

 

I like this line of the thinking. I'm amazed that the question of, "Who will watch over government/big business if/when newspapers die?" is not asked more often.

Internet Web sites, the home of rumors, grown men posing as teenage girls and the slippery slope of declining grammar?

TV news? Heck, all they care about is getting their 15-second quote for the camera.

I think its a scary thought, and it's not just for metro areas with giant corporations. Small-town government would become more corrupt than it already is.

 

Nixon is looking down (or up?) and smiling with satisfaction.
We'll never see another Watergate because in today's newspaper world, it could never happen.

 

Remember the Simpsons where Homer so famously said of USA Today, "the only newspaper with the guts to tell it like it is-that everything is just fine"? Truth is, the public doesn't give a shit if the watchdog function vanishes. Being an informed citizen is too much work.
They will miss seeing their kid's name in the swimming agate, though. Tough luck for them.

 

I know we don't like to admit it....but there's always going to be news. There might not be print news, but there's so much electronic news we can't even get to all of it. The network and cable and internet folks have nothing but time and space...and cash. And hopefully they'll absorb a lot of the former print talent.

If anything, electronic news seems determined to 'watchdog' us to death.

Probably won't help with the freshmen swimming agate, though. :-\