By Steve Rhodes
The Tribune introduces its first front-page ad today.
Jesus, Back To Bed is the best you could do? A mattress dealer?
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Ad copy: “Tonight, get the sleep you dream about.”
Yes, take the Tribune to bed with you!
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I wonder if the powers-that-be thought a BP ad would be too hot to start with. Late last week and through the weekend, BP ads ran on the Trib website within pixels of the paper’s stories about the oil company’s controversial plan to increase the amount of crap it dumps in Lake Michigan from its Whiting, Indiana refinery.
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The Sun-Times resumes its Product Placement Program.
What, is it National Mattress Week or something?
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Scott C. Smith’s disingenuous Publishers Note.
Rejected version: “Our obscene margins are slipping so we sold out the front page so our executives can keep raking in millions of dollars a year to maintain their jet-set lifestyle at the expense of the public interest.”
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Smith writes that “The revenue generated by new ads also will play an important role in funding the first-rate journalism and customer service we are committed to delivering each and every day.”
Why am I skeptical that even a penny of the ad revenue derived will find its way into the newsroom?
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A better idea.
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Life’s Great Questions
Among those Ask Marilyn’s Marilyn vos Savant found too “special” to answer:
“Do you think daylight-saving time could be contributing to global warming? The longer we have sunlight, the more it heats the atmosphere.”
Executive Privilege
“We have the most protected, covered, cautious and public relations-barricaded generation of leaders in history,” said Jeffrey A. Sonnefeld, a professor of corporate governance at Yale.”
Kill Me Now
“Today, the Sun-Times kicks off a monthlong look at Chicagoland’s babies . . . ”
Oh Lord!
Findings: The most popular name by the richest 25 percent is Michael! As it is for the bottom 25 percent! But “you’re 10 times more likely to find a child named Jack in a richer ZIP code than in a poorer one.”
Alert the media!
Er, I guess they already know.
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News meeting that took place somewhere other than the Sun-Times recently:
Editor 1: Hey, let’s have one of our reporters go to an expert and see what her name says about her!
Editor 2: Look, we’re in high school now. This isn’t the junior high paper anymore.
Indian Giver
Will the new “progressive” Sun-Times editorial pages continue to include the comic cartoon stylings of Jack Higgins?
I just find his work to be a bit incongruous with the new tone. Take his cartoon on Sunday of controversial former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill.
“Who was that masked man?” Higgins has Churchill saying looking wistfully at a Lone Ranger in the distance. “Does he need a sidekick?”
Get it? Because Churchill is (supposedly) an American Indian. Like Tonto.
For further effect, Higgins has Churchill holding a piece of paper saying “Ward Churchill Fired – New low man on totem pole.”
Get it? ‘Cause Indians use totem poles and stuff.
I guess there was no room for a rain dance and a bottle of liquor.
Kill Me Now Again
Oh Lord, My Boys is back!
“There is so much wrong in this show I don’t even know where to start.”
“How hard does My Boys suck? Pretty hard.”
“I actually look forward now to watching My Boys every Tuesday night so I can continue to crusade against it.”
“It’s not that I’m obsessed with how bad My Boys is, is that it’s so bad I keep watching out of amazement.”
Union Buster
So it turns out it may not be illegal at all for Cook County prosecutors to unionize. It may just be that Dick Devine doesn’t want them to.
Hardy Har Har!
My Boys ad copy in full-page Sun-Times ad today: “When the two seasons in Chicago are winter and construction, let’s face it, you could use a laugh!”
Rush Job I
What in the world is Bobby Rush doing talking about holding hearings about the alleged NBA gambling scandal? Well, it turns out he can hold hearings on anything he wants.
For example, if he wanted to hold a hearing about politicians and their relationships with companies whose bills they vote on, he could do that.
But really, shouldn’t congressional hearings be about the public interest, not a congressman’s interest?
Rush Job II
Rush has sent a letter to NBA commissioner David Stern asking for a personal briefing on the alleged gambling scandal.
The Beachwood has obtained a list of other folks Rush has sent letters to asking for personal briefings:
* Matt Groening, for a briefing of The Simpsons.
* J.K. Rowling, for a briefing on Harry Potter.
* Angelina Jolie, for a briefing on . . . Angelina Jolie.
That’s Manny!
First Ward Ald. Manny Flores continues to smooth the way for developer financing of his congressional campaign.
History Lesson
“I really believe the Olympics movement sets aside politics,” Daley said. “Otherwise, we would never have an Olympic movement. They’d be caught up in politics.”
Like the time Hitler used the Berlin Games for propaganda purposes, or the American boycott of the Moscow Olympics and the subsequent Soviet boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics, or Herb Brooks saying the Lake Placid hockey victory validated our way of life, or Steven Spielberg considering pulling out of the Beijing Olympics because of China’s culpability in Darfur.
But yes, otherwise the mayor is right.
Wages of Gentrification
Percentage of every dollar spent at a locally owned Chicago store that is retained or recirculated in the city: 68.
Percentage of every dollar spent at a chain store in Chicago that is: 43.
– Harper’s Index
The Beachwood Tip Line: Insert ad here.
Posted on July 30, 2007