By Steve Rhodes

When Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass learned recently that his favorite downtown lunch spot, The Cambridge House, was shutting down because the building owner was turning the spot into condos, he wrote a tough but elegantly mournful piece about the latest loss of another venerable–and affordable–part of authentic Chicago going by the wayside.
“There should be places in the middle, for people in the middle, places like The Cambridge House,” Kass wrote. “They’re not about atmosphere. You can’t taste atmosphere, although speaking of atmosphere, Chicago is losing another restaurant, The Berghoff. It is a culinary landmark, and I’m sure it deserves the thousands of stories being written about it, now that it’s closing, as a special place for memories of special occasions.
“But the great thing about The Cambridge House is that it wasn’t for special occasions. You didn’t walk through the doors to make a statement or a memory. You entered to have a decent meal.
“And so the loss of such places may even be more profound, because it signifies the loss of the everyday.”

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Posted on April 6, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

I think we can all agree that the entire country needs a civics lesson–from our spineless, spinning, self-absorbed politicians to our greedy corporate chieftains to our ideological and intolerant zealots on all sides of the political spectrum who gum up any chance we have for honest democratic debate about how we will organize society and live our lives.
It’s not just young people who are stupid.
But let’s talk about newspaper people for a second.

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Posted on April 5, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

Declining readership isn’t the fault of newspapers, but the fault of too many stupid young Americans who don’t keep up and thus have put our democracy in peril.
At least that’s how I read today’s argument (“Why Johnny Can’t Be Bothered“) put forth by labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan and Chicago Tribune deputy managing editor Jim Warren on the Tribune‘s Op-Ed page. And hey, who knows more about how badly misguided young people are out of step with vital institutions that are in no way crumbling than a labor lawyer and a newspaper editor.

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Posted on April 4, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

If you want to catch up with The [Sunday] Papers, and we think you do because it was a very Lou Dobbs-like day in the local press, go here. It will be totally worth it. And then come back.
If you want to catch up with last night’s White Sox game, don’t pick up a Chicago Sun-Times unless there is a new edition on the streets.
Because the results of last night’s home opener for the defending World Series champion Chicago White Sox and season opener for Major League Baseball ended too late to be included in the Sports Final edition of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Can a newspaper seem any more primitive in the Internet Age?
Also, my computer wasn’t wet from the rain this morning, like my newspapers were.

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Posted on April 3, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

The important news in the Sunday papers is about immigration, baseball, and the American worker. Kind of like a Lou Dobbs show. Only with baseball.

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Posted on April 3, 2006

By Natasha Julius

Stories we’d really rather not keep an eye on this weekend, but we just can’t turn away.
‘Roids of Summer
The Major League Baseball season opens this weekend, which means it’s time for another ham-fisted, bacon-armed and pork-bellied attempt to clean up the sport. It’d be shooting fish in a barrel for us to predict how this investigation will play out given that the actual investigating has already been done, but let’s just say we’re pretty confident Japan is going to win this thing.
You’ve Got Appoint . . .
Plausible deniability got in a nice 10K training run this week when reports emerged that Gov. Rod Blagojevich had met Claudette Marie Muhammad prior to her controversial appointment to a state anti-discrimination commission. However it seems the governor meets far too many people to remember any of them, even those he subsequently appoints to high-profile positions. And we applaud him for this. After all, if employers were expected to remember all the people they hire we never would’ve landed this sweet gig. So get down wit’ your forgetful self, Rod.
(Although, for the record, you’re still on your own with that Daily Show thing.)
Justice DeLayed
In the wake of news that a former top aide to Tom DeLay pleaded guilty to conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with a federal corruption probe, we will begin mapping out the plausible deniability marathon route this weekend and apply for the necessary permits.
Go With Your Gut
When a movie studio takes more than 10 years to produce the sequel to a successful film, it’s generally not because the filmmakers are having trouble deciding which brilliant ideas to include. In fact, it’s usually because the filmmakers have run out of things to say, or because it took them that long to forget what a cheesy train wreck the first film was. Either way, kids, if a pretty blonde lady offers you candy this weekend, we advise you to run.
Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Here at Beachwood Weekend Desk HQ, we’ve been saying for years that the road to heaven is paved with empty pizza boxes. We just didn’t think they’d be from frickin’ Domino’s. So this weekend we’ll be taking our good intentions over by the road to hell. At least we can score a decent slice of deep dish.

Posted on April 1, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

Chicago Tribune sports columnist Rick Morrissey today expresses a sentiment I have heard from a couple others in the paper’s sports department over the years: His bosses should sell the Cubs.
“A newspaper has no business owning a baseball team, in the same way a newspaper would have no business owning a cell-phone company, an insurance company or any other company it might have to cover as a news story,” Morrissey writes.
For a newspaper to own a sports franchise is, for a sports section, akin to a newspaper owning City Hall. No matter how pure everyone may act, the coverage will always be called into question. And that’s untenable for a newspaper’s credibility.
Besides, it puts the paper in a no-win situation. When it gets scooped on Cubs news, it is ridiculed for not knowing what’s going on in its own company. But the paper would be wrong to ask for special consideration in getting tipped off to Cubs news as well.
It’s a burden the sports section and the rest of the paper should not have to live under–and it’s not clear that the financial benefits have been worth it, if the analysts are correct (or that those benefits have flowed appreciably to newsroom resources).
The situation also makes a mockery of the vaunted ethics policies of both the Tribune Company and the Tribune newspaper itself. Consider: A reporter can’t accept a gift worth more than a keychain but the company can own a baseball team it not only reports on in print, but broadcasts on its TV and radio stations, which in turn cover the team as well, etc. etc.

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Posted on March 31, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

So it turns out the big immigration rally here in Chicago a few weeks ago was just the beginning. A string of protests in other major cities followed and now, suddenly it seems, immigration has leapt to the top of the nation’s domestic agenda.
Of course, in reality it’s not so sudden. Immigration has been building steam over the years for a variety of reasons, and it’s peaking now in large part due to legislation currently moving through Congress.
But it still seems sudden.
Does this mean that Jim Oberweis was actually ahead of the curve?

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Posted on March 30, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

It was a real cliffhanger in the Democratic primary for the sixth district seat of the Illinois House of Representatives.
With 79 percent of the vote counted last week, for example, unofficial results put challenger Darryl Smith ahead of incumbent Esther Golar by five votes, in a four-way race.
The Chicago Defender reported on Monday that Golar had inched ahead of Smith with 111 of 114 precincts reporting; Golar had 4,201 votes (40 percent) to Smith’s 3,892 (37 percent). A third candidate, Samuel T. Bunville, had 16 percent of the vote, while the fourth candidate, Keith Kysel, notched 7 percent of the vote.
Today the Defender reports that Golar’s margin has held; with all precincts reporting, Golar claimed 4,343 votes (40 percent) to Smith ‘s 3,971 (37 percent).
With no one running on the Republican side, this was the election. And what a barn-burner it was.
But in searches of LexisNexis, Google, and the paper’s own Websites, not a single story about this race turned up in the Chicago Tribune or the Chicago Sun-Times.
Why should the papers have been been interested in this particular race, besides the standard fact–which ought to be enough–that the contest is for a Chicago seat in the state legislature?
Because the sixth district (among others) represents Englewood.

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Posted on March 29, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

The Chicago Tribune explains its reporting in the George Ryan jury mess quite satisfactorily today. Columnist Eric Zorn adds some interesting details.
The newspaper did its job. I don’t see how it could or should have handled this story any differently.
But can we just move on to the appeal now?

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Posted on March 28, 2006