Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Wednesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

1. BERNIE BUCKS.
“Sen. Bernie Sanders took a few moments in his victory speech Tuesday night to make a small request of his supporters: ‘Please help us raise the funds we need, whether it’s 10 bucks, 20 bucks, or 50 bucks,’ he said,” the Washington Post reports.
“The response was so overwhelming that his website buckled under the traffic. Between the close of the polls and 12:30 a.m., his campaign brought in $2.6 million.”


2. MAINSTREAM MEDIA’S MENDACIOUS MINDSET.
“Hillary Clinton’s supporters often argue that mainstream political reporters are incapable of covering her positively – or even fairly. While it may be true that the political press doesn’t always write exactly what Clinton would like, e-mails recently obtained by Gawker offer a case study in how her prodigious and sophisticated press operation manipulates reporters into amplifying her desired message – in this case, down to the very word that The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder used to describe an important policy speech,” Gawker reports.
Go read this, vomit, clean yourself up, and come back.
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Here’s the e-mail exchange I had with our very own Tim Willette about this:
STEVE: “Yup. Happens in Chicago all the time, too. And what does it get you? Bullshit! Is it worth getting a speech preview if you have to describe it as muscular? Why? What does that get you? ‘I got the speech before everyone else.’ That means you’re a wanker! But the Chicago press corps will tell you that’s ‘what you have to do.'”
TIM: “It’s silly. ‘Attention, here’s a copy of this great speech she’s about to deliver!’ Does anyone benefit from that? Why? Because the reader gets to know the news a few hours before it happened and is also spun? Also, this does not qualify as a scoop to me. A scoop is a story that, but for the work of the journalist, would not otherwise become known.”
Yup.
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It’s not hard to be a decent journalist. Just don’t suck. Just don’t. You can consciously make that decision. “Nope, not today.”
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“But editors demand I act corruptly!”
Too bad. You don’t accept that excuse from the people you cover, so you don’t get to accept it from yourself. Expose those editors, band together with your reporting brethren, take it to the top, and go public. And if you must, quit. You are no longer doing journalism anyway.
3. BUNCHA PUSSIES.
“[Monday] night, in front of thousands of people, Donald Trump stood on stage and called Ted Cruz a pussy. And while you are not supposed to say the word ‘pussy,’ members of the media are especially not supposed to say the word ‘pussy.’ So instead, they got creative,” Gawker notes.
“Here are some of our favorite feats of linguistic gymnastics done in the name of moral decency, ranked.”
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Just say it. Kids aren’t reading you anyway, and even they are, so what. They already know what it means.
4. MIDDLING MAT LATOS.
“The White Sox possess an unparalleled ability to keep players healthy, and so perhaps they think they can fix Latos’ injury struggles, or at least help limit them. But Latos dropped nearly 2 mph off his average fastball velocity after the knee surgery, down to 90, and he’s now down 4 mph from where he was when he entered the league in 2009. Clearly, the mechanics have affected the knee, and the knee has affected the pitcher, and so you could argue that Latos hasn’t been himself in two years,” August Fagerstorm writes for Fangraphs about the new White Sox pitcher.
“The counterpoint to that is, once Latos came off the second knee-related DL stint last year, he said the knee felt fine. And, over his final five weeks in Miami, Latos looked like vintage Latos, running a 2.96 ERA and 3.33 FIP over seven starts. It’s a small sample, sure, and I don’t blame you if you don’t want to trust the results. But you can’t fake fastball velocity, and in that same stretch, Latos had his old fastball back, averaging more than 92 mph and pumping it up to 95 at times. Latos hasn’t been himself for a full season since 2013, but flashes of the real Latos could be seen as recently as last June.”
5. SEARS SLIPPING AWAY.
“Sears seems to be going the way of Woolworth and Montgomery Ward,” the New York Post reports.
Or maybe the way of the shopping mall?
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“The venerable retailer has seen its revenue sliced in half over the past decade that hedge fund mogul Eddie Lampert has owned it. Sales have plummeted from $49 billion in 2006 to an estimated $25 billion in sales last year, and its fourth-quarter guidance Tuesday confirmed the trend is continuing.”
6. LOOSIE LUNACY.
“Mayor Rahm Emanuel jump-started his proposal to raise the legal age to buy cigarettes in Chicago to 21 and raise a series of tobacco taxes after he agreed to increase fines for people caught selling illegal smokes,” the Tribune reports.
“Under the amended proposal, first-time fines for selling illegal cigarettes will be increased to $5,000 from $2,500. Subsequent offenses will see fines of up to $10,000 rather than the current $5,000. People caught selling the illegal cigarettes could also face up to six months in jail.”
That strikes me as lunacy. What I’d like to know is how tightly this is enforced; how many people are in jail for selling loosies? I understand why it’s illegal, but I also understand something about proportionality – and racial and class equity in enforcement.
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Riding The Dog, Part 4: Faceplant Position
Making movies, on location.
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Highly recommended. Super funny.
Now Even Statues Of Dirty Illinois Governors Want Your Money
Kankakee clownin’ around.
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Our very own Ed Hammer remains on the story.
The Fantasy Fix Baseball Draft Guide: 1Bs & 3Bs
“If you’re a Chicago baseball fan, there’s a lot to like in this year’s pre-season fantasy rankings for first base and third base, including my sizable but calculated gamble to rank one of the local boys as the top fantasy find at his position,” writes our very own Dan O’Shea, our man in fantasyland.
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I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Even if you don’t play fantasy sports, but still follow the games or local teams, Dan is a great and informative read.
Jonathan Pie, TV Reporter! The Truth About Teachers & Doctors
And how the media presents “objective” “news.”
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I love Jonathan Pie.
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TweetWood
A sampling.


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The Beachwood Tip Line: Combat rock.

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Posted on February 10, 2016