Month: January 2008

Mack the knife coming to town?

“Who is the real Dean Singleton?” asked The Columbia Journalism Review in 2003 about the man named by Crain’s Chicago Business as top dog on a company heard as possible buyer of the Sun-Times.

Is he a mass murderer of newspapers, or is he a man whose hardheaded pragmatism has enabled him, in a difficult period for the industry, to preserve many more newspaper jobs than he has eliminated?

S-T business editor Dan Miller is not waiting to find out.  He resigned today “before he becomes a casualty of pending staff cuts,” reported Crain’s.

Singleton’s Media News Group is not interested in buying S-T, they told Crain’s.

Among those nailing Singleton for the Columbia review article was former Chi Trib editor James Squires, who called him a “bone-picker publisher . . . who can wring blood from a turnip.”

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Newspapers might ponder this

This guy is on to something, or three things, that shed some light on the Great Newspaper Conundrum of our day, especially in Chicago, where the Sun-Times seems to be in dire straits:

The way I see it, newspapers, for now, are positioned to provide three things that are at a high premium and that most blogs/bloggers can’t deliver. I think most would be wise to capitalize on these by shifting the state of mind from being a newspaper to becoming a news organization/outlet/center:

If you want to know the three things, look here.

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Jesse Jr. on Obama as black leader

Congr. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D) on Don & Roma this morning (WLS-AM) presents the Obama campaign as engine of black empowerment, citing 400,000 unregistered black voters in S. Carolina and another 400G+ in Florida and counting on black identification with O.  SC, “historically red,” will become blue, he expects, benefiting Dems in process of arousing (coralling) black electorate.  Having his father’s worldview a la 60s activism, he sees this as a movement, even when it’s politics.

He’s still his father’s son in another respect, mangling the language with such solecisms as being careful not to enter “delicate waters” and noting the impulse to “lob Howitzers” at one’s political opponent.  He’s had top-drawer exclusive Eastern prep school education but still uses words as ideograms or Rorschach blots, sounding genteely ignorant as he does it.

Those delicate waters recall the ladies repairing to Bath for bodily restoration in the 19th century.  As for lobbing a Howitzer, that’s Incredible Hulk stuff.  Can’t be done.

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Holy mother the fedl govt., come to our aid

Newsbusters hits Sun-Times hard today, in its editorial spread vs. GW as leaving children behind.  In the process NewsB. shoots down the whole idea of feds running education productively:

The oldest trick in the book in the “news” biz is to take a photo of a politician that makes him look worried, sad, or downcast to offset a story of how things aren’t working so well for that pol’s policies or plans. Well, the Chicago Sun-Times has used that ages old trick to lambast president Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program by giving us the stories of several Illinois students that supposedly slipped through the cracks of the Federal program and using a picture of Bush with furrowed brow with inset pictures of the several students. Of course, their stories are expectedly filled with nonsense, but it is the photo that the Sun-Times really expects to tell the tale. This photo says “failure and he knows it” all over the thing and sets the tone of bias from the start.

The editorial leans heavily on anecdotal argument, a newspaper staple.  Which is why I often discount newspaper arguments.

As for the law itself, the dreadful situation

won’t improve, many in Chicago’s trenches say, unless the law is changed to address what stands in the way: inequitable funding, overcrowding, violence, truancy and the overwhelming effects of poverty.

If only the federal govt. would “address” funding, violence, truancy, etc.  And if it would, then what?

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Being there is what counts

Among “highs” discovered in last night’s debate by Stephen Green was one for

Obama, for looking and sounding presidential. He still hasn’t said much, but more and more Obama knows how to make you feel comfortable with the idea of him as President. He’s fully developed that something that we call “presidential.” It’s not much of a high, but it was all he needed to prove himself tonight’s winner on the Democratic side.

He’s this year’s Chance the Gardener, a David Axelrod presentation.  Peter Sellers never looked so good.

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Forgive me, Father . . .

Richard Sipe dissects and lambastes seminary training in his blog, along the way calling on Andrew Greeley, urging us to

study Greeley’s cardinal [in Cardinal Sins, his 1981 novel] and note his use of confession to ease his conscience, cover his shame, regain his peace of mind, experience relief, but not to change or reform him. The pattern is established in seminary training, but lasts a lifetime in the service of sickness and crime.

Confession as cover-up?

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Some bishops not cooperating?

Implementation of the Pope’s call for openness to old-style Latin masses has been uneven, with some bishops issuing rules that “practically annul or twist the intention of the Pope,” Msgr. Albert Malcolm Ranjith, secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Divine Cult [sic] and Discipline of Sacraments, said recently, according to the Vatican’s missionary news agency FIDES.

Such reactions amounted to a “crisis of obedience” toward the pontiff, he was quoted as saying, although he stressed that most bishops and other prelates had accepted the Pope’s will “with the required sense of reverence and obedience.”

Oh.  When maverick priests hung with the Latin 40 years ago — Gommar DePauw comes to mind — they were shot down summarily.  The reformers were in the saddle, and no quarter was given.  It was like Elizabeth I’s Cecil demanding conformity 400 years earlier.  The joke was, what’s difference between a liturgist and a terrorist?  Ans.: You can negotiate with a terrorist.

Of course, after Elizabeth came Bloody Mary, and rolling of heads.  Not predicting or wishing anything, mind you.  Just taking note.

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Behold this Christian, he loves government

Longtime conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie considers Huckabee’s Iowa win “bad news” for Republicans:

“Mike Huckabee is a Christian socialist. He is a good man, but with a Big Government heart,” Viguerie said in a news release late Thursday night. “He is the most liberal of all the Republican presidential candidates on economic issues.”

Viguerie said Huckabee is inclined to solve any problem by passing laws or launching another government program. “If you like President George W. Bush, you’ll love Mike Huckabee,” Viguerie said. “Conservatives in New Hampshire and the other early primary states had better wake up, and make certain the Huckabee victory is confined to the subsidized ethanol fields of Iowa.”

Well, if he finds as many right-wing Christians in New Hampshire, which we hear he won’t, it’s to worry.  Otherwise, not.

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