By Steve Rhodes
1. At a city council meeting last year, Environmental Commissioner Sadhu Johnston was asked why Chicago was the only big city using the blue-bag recycling system. Oh, but we aren’t, Johnston said. There’s Columbus, Ohio.
Columbus announced this week that it was ditching its blue bags, just three months into a pilot program.
2. The Reader is eliminating Section Four, Lewis Lazare reports today (second item). The ads that made up the section will be stuffed into the rest of the paper. “By concentrating more ads in fewer sections,” Lazare writes, “the Reader will increase the ratio of advertising-to-editorial content, and reduce the number of printed pages.”
Sick of advertising clutter? Want your message seen clearly by a targeted audience? Contact me for more information.
3. The governor politicizes childrens’ health care.
4. In the current issue of N’Digo, Publisher Hermene Hartman says “Todd Stroger is clearly not up to the task” of the Cook County Board presidency. In the same issue, Robert Starks says that should U.S. Rep. Danny Davis win the seat instead, Ald. Isaac Carothers would be in line to take Davis’s congressional seat. (Stories not yet online.)
5. “Chicago, which is pursuing the games along with San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Houston, is said to be among the cities most aggressively campaigning for the event, but it has already made some missteps along the way. When asked what his pitch would be to Olympic officials, Mayor Richard Daley said he saw it as an opportunity to ‘showcase Middle America.’ Most Europeans couldn’t find Middle America on a map, and though they could easily find San Francisco, they know that philosophically and politically, our West Coast haven doesn’t even consider itself part of America.”
– Ken Garcia, San Francisco Examiner
6. Another West Coast report on Chicago’s Olympic effort says Mayor Daley is promising a “Chicago-style” Games that would mesh with his already-successful job-creation program.
7. Mancow Muller said on Chicago Tonight last night that getting fired from Q101 was the best thing that ever happened to him, even as he complained bitterly about getting fired from Q101. He named dinosaur bands Depeche Mode and Duran Duran as examples of alternative artists favored by the station, and then announced that he would “create a new form of radio” elsewhere on the dial that would “save FM radio.”
When pressed by interviewer Phil Ponce on just what Mancow’s revolutionary new schtick would entail, Mancow, referring to himself, said, “The schtick is this guy, this idiot sitting here. There is no schtick.”
Hey, Mancow, the FBI may be hiring soon.
8. Jon Stewart on net neutrality.
9. The suburban Daily Herald began publishing this week a print version of its online Beepcentral.com. According to an internal memo, 15.000 copies of the the inaugural edition of the printed Beep were distributed to “locations where young people congregate” and another 15,000 copies were “mailed to those in the 21-34 demographic in Schaumburg, Naperville and Elgin.”
The paper says Beepcentral.com, which launched in mid-February, is getting 350,000 page views a month.
10. Harvey.
11. Did you know that doctors actually pay sports teams a fee to work for them so they can cash in on the promotional value of saying they are, say, on a particular team’s medical staff? That’s what sports scribe Lester Munson said yesterday on The Score.
That’s why players – and their union representatives – often insist on getting second opinions from their personal doctors, Munson says.
12. Tribune Company is placing a big bet on its stake in the CW, the new network that combines the old UPN and WB that debuts in fall. “We feel that ratings increases in the 25 percent range are very achievable,” CEO Dennis FitzSimons told Wall Street on Thursday.
Tribune execs also report that second quarter interactive revenues were up 27 percent over last year, while online traffic was up 24 percent.
“We intend to make our local newspaper sites more robust including increased use of video and user-generated content. We intend to expand Metromix, an entertainment vertical has been very successful here in Chicago, to other markets, and acquire additional businesses like ForSaleByOwner.com that will add to our portfolio of faster growing Internet businesses,” FitzSimons said.
“As we said before, by 2010, we expect to more than double the percentage of publishing ad revenue coming from our fast growing Internet businesses to the 12-15 percent range.”
13. On disappointing results on the Cubs front, FitzSimons said: “[W]e have added seats and despite an unacceptable on-field performance, the attendance is probably 99% of capacity. So, what you are seeing in the second quarter is just a shift in the number of home games, which is part of what is causing that decline. Also WGN Radio revenues are slightly lower. So we did not have a strong quarter at the radio station. Those are pretty much the elements.”
The Beachwood Tip Line: Braving the elements.
Posted on July 14, 2006