The dog ate Chi Trib‘s homework.  The computer did it to yesterday’s paper, the publisher explains today. 

“[A] computer system failure caused by a software coding error (italics added) significantly delayed production and delivery of Monday’s print edition,”

the publisher tells readers.  This is standard blame-taking.  Nothing personal, you know. 

 

“The source of the problem has been identified,” never mind by whom.  This is Modern Times in the Charley Chaplin mode.  They (editorial, monarchic “we”) “sincerely apologize . . . and are committed to improving safeguards.  . . .  We thank you . .. for your commitment” to Chi Trib.

 

That’s really nice, especially the sincerely part. 

 

Meanwhile, the story is covered, and not impersonally, by newsgatherer professionals, and computer expert James Coates puts it in technological perspective in “A story we never thought we’d print,” which is a good way to put it and with the news story shows us how good journalistic writing differs from the corporate variety.  Coates even mentions people in the first sentence:

“Nothing built by humans can go wrong in as many ways or with as nasty an outcome as a computer system.”

In fact, his whole account is a tale of derring-do, including hour-by-hour retelling.  Maybe it will enter the lore.

Chi Trib has page one story 7/19 about Iraq rebels gaining force, expanding power, citing (regretfully, to be sure) a U.S. colonel a year ago talking about Saddam’s henchmen’s last gasp.  Gotcha!

 

This is part of the drumbeat of negativism appearing not in its editorials but in its so-called news coverage.

 

Meanwhile, you can easily find reports from the ground on the web that tell you we are winning.  Who’s right?  I have my opinion, but so what?  Point is, why is Chi Trib so consarned one-sided in its so-called news reporting?  It’s getting ridiculous.  Really. 

 

GRAZIE . .. Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg recommends Chicago Newspapers today, with special attn. to the 5/15 “As the Trib turned” item. He calls it a “keel-hauling of the . . . painfully shallow and criminally dull Dawn Turner Trice” and refers to “the funhouse mirror of Trice’s mind” that led her to get things so confused. Read it all here.