WBEZ | newspapers

It's news-quizzin' time!

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 05:00:00 -0600

It's that time again. Test your knowledge of the news over the last week, as recounted in the pages of this blog. Study up, then click below. (Or click below and consult the blog as you go along; we're not fussy.)

Four things for your weekend:

'JOURNALISTS ARE ON NOTICE. IF YOU INVESTIGATE THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT, CHINESE HACKERS WILL COME AFTER YOU.' Slate's Farhad Manjoo says reporters need to learn two lessons from the hacking of The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and others.
* The NYT's squeamishness about the S-word leads it to print a Web address that just doesn't work.
* "The Onion Freely And Happily Gives Its Employees' Passwords To China."

LAW SCHOOL SQUEEZE. Applications are headed toward a 30-year low, and Jordan Weissmann of The Atlantic calls it "a desperately needed adjustment" because "the legal economy is in a shambles."

'THE GUNS-FOR-EVERYONE ADVOCATES HATE THAT STATISTIC.' Handgun-owning Democrat Stephen King -- yes, that Stephen King -- has published a 99-cent ebook essay spotlighting a 60 percent drop in gun homicides since Australia cracked down on guns.
* PolitiFact.com: Numbers back him up.
* Mother Jones: 10 pro-gun myths shot down.

OSCAR-NOMINATED MOVIE, FREE. If you didn't see "Wreck-It Ralph," you probably haven't seen the touching piece that preceded it, "Paperman," one of the contenders for the animated short award. But Disney's released it to the Web via YouTube, and so you can see it here. If "Love Actually" had been good, it would've looked more like this. (Catch the homage to "The Red Balloon" at 5:39.) You're welcome.

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
* This space intentionally left blank.

Orange County Register owner eyes Tribune papers

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 11:46:00 -0600

SANTA ANA, Calif. — The publisher of the Orange County Register said Thursday that at an investor group he leads may want to buy Tribune Co.'s newspapers after the media conglomerate emerges from bankruptcy.

"We clearly have the means and the team by which to look seriously at the Tribune papers and, from the outside, they may very well have enough of the elements that we're looking for," said Aaron Kushner, chief executive of 2100 Trust LLC, which bought Freedom Communications Inc. and its flagship paper, the Register, in July.

Tribune, which is expected to leave bankruptcy protection soon, owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and five other daily newspapers. The Chicago-based conglomerate also operates 23 television stations.

Kushner cautioned that he hasn't examined Tribune's finances but signaled he would move quickly if he determined its newspapers are a good fit.

"I think it's a pretty small group that potentially could fit our model," he said in an interview.

Kushner, who is also Freedom Communications' CEO, has overseen the hiring of dozens of journalists and a major expansion of the print edition of the Register, the nation's 20th-largest newspaper by circulation and a direct competitor of the Los Angeles Times. Freedom Communications is the 39-year-old's first foray in newspapers after he flirted with buying The Boston Globe and newspapers in Maine.

Tribune filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2008, less than a year after a debt-laden buyout engineered by Sam Zell. Its new owners include JPMorgan Chase & Co., debt specialist Angelo, Gordon & Co., and hedge fund Oaktree Capital Management.

Kushner said he expects the Tribune's new owners would sell the newspapers in a single package.

"There's a tremendous amount of infrastructure that's shared among the newspapers, and they have been together, with the exception of the LA Times, for a long time," Kushner said. "Disassembling them in an auction sort of a way or a process may be achievable, but our sense is it would end up resulting in significantly less for the current owners of the Tribune Co."

Freedom recently sold The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo. Kushner signaled he was open to selling Freedom's five smaller newspapers in California and Arizona.

"We wouldn't have bought them if we didn't love them. That said, if we find that there is an owner that can do an even better job than us with them, we'll talk with them," he said.

Chicago gets a newspaper

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 05:00:00 -0600

The year was 1833. Chicago had just been incorporated as a town. There were already 300 people living here. On this November 26, we got our first newspaper.

Our 21st Century media like to portray themselves as unbiased and non-partisan. Sometimes they are. But in 1833, newspapers let you know their agenda right up front. That first local paper was a weekly named the Chicago Democrat.

The man behind it was John Calhoun. He’d run a succession of unsuccessful papers in New York, most recently in Watertown. After hearing travelers’ tales about the boomtown on Lake Michigan, the young editor headed west.

Calhoun set up shop in a building on Clark Street just south of the river. Like anyone who owned a printing press in 1833, he depended on job-lot printing orders to make his living. The newspaper was more of a sideline, a vehicle to publicize his personal views.

(Hmmm. Sounds like a blog.)

Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, was president. The opposition party was called the Whigs. Yet the feature story in the first issue of the Chicago Democrat was not a political manifesto. Instead, it was an account of a powwow between two native tribes, the Sioux and the Sac-and-Fox.

That tells you something about the newspaper business in those times. Calhoun had copied the whole powwow story from a St. Louis paper. Was this plagiarism? There weren’t any wire services yet, so editors got their out-of-town news by lifting it from other papers. Hey, even Ben Franklin had “borrowed” stories!

The one piece of original work was the editorial. There Calhoun came out boldly in favor of building a canal or railroad to link Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. Oddly enough, that was the type of editorial you’d expect to find in a "big government" Whig paper, not in a paper calling itself the Democrat.

Calhoun continued to publish, with some interruptions. In 1836 a group of local party leaders bought him out. The Democrat was later purchased by John Wentworth, who operated it for several years before finally closing down in 1861. By then Long John was a Republican.

John Calhoun himself died in 1859. Today Chicago’s first newspaper editor is memorialized in Calhoun Place, an alley between Madison and Washington in the Loop.

Hayner retiring as Chicago Sun-Times editor

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:23:50 -0500

Chicago Sun-Times editor-in-chief Don Hayner has announced he is retiring after nearly 30 years at the newspaper.

The Sun-Times reports Hayner made the announcement Thursday afternoon. He will be succeeded by John Barron, who will be executive editor after three years as publisher. Hayner led the Sun-Times when it won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in 2011.

Hayner told staffers he decided to retire and it is "time to hand off the baton."

The 60-year-old Hayner started at the newspaper as a general assignment reporter. He was named editor in February 2009. He also served as city editor, metro editor and managing editor. He also was a lawyer who represented criminal defendants at the Cook County courthouse before working for the City News Bureau and the Chicago Tribune.

Sun-Times to stop endorsing politicial candidates

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:31:00 -0600

After more than 70 years of publication, The Chicago Sun-Times says it plans to stop endorsing political candidates through its editorial pages.

The Sun-Times announced the decision in its Monday paper through a joint statement by the Publisher John Barron and Editorial Page Editor Tom McNamee.

In the statement, the board questioned the relevance of the more than century-old practice of newspaper endorsements. The board said it "doubts the value of candidate endorsements by this newspaper or any newspaper, especially in a day when a multitude of information sources allow even a casual voter to be better informed than ever before."

The editorial went on to say editorial endorsements "don’t change many votes," and added many readers believe them to "promote the perception of a hidden bias by a newspaper."

The Sun-Times would not comment outside of the editorial published Monday.

Chicago Tribune's editorial page editor, Bruce Dold, said that while The Sun-Times' decision doesn't mean the loss of its editorial voice, the paper is "moving away from what ... is a critical piece of it, having that voice on who should be in leadership and government positions."

Dold said the Tribune's editorial board will continue to endorse candidates.

The Sun-Times said it will keep publishing editorials on civic issues.

Assessing the state of Chicago's black media

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:22:00 -0500

The rough-and-tumble economy was not kind to either large or small publications. Recently, one of the country’s oldest and most influential black-owned newspapers hit another rough patch.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the Chicago Defender laid off a sixth of its staff this week, including its remaining editors. The Defender once claimed a large national audience but circulation fell in recent years. To cut costs a few years ago, the paper switched from daily to weekly publication.

Are the Defender’s woes a sign of the times for black media in general?

Cultural commentator and Jet contributor Kyra Kyles spoke with Eight Forty-Eight to assess the state of black media in Chicago.

Tribune Co. creditors begin bankruptcy court fight

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 21:24:00 -0600

Creditors of the Chicago-based Tribune Company began battling it out in bankruptcy court in Delaware today. The bankruptcy judge will decide between two competing reorganization plans submitted by creditors.

No matter which plan wins, the company will eventually be owned by a group of lenders that financed Sam Zell’s buyout in 2007. That group includes J.P. Morgan Chase.

Media analyst Ken Doctor says once the lenders are in charge, they’ll focus strictly on the bottom line.

"This is like buying a razor blade company that’s been on hard times," Doctor said. "We can buy it cheap, we can pretty it up and then we can sell it for more than we paid in three years."

Doctor says the new owners will likely try to sell off some newspapers and broadcast outlets. He says they’ll possibly try to merge the rest of the company with another media business to cut costs.