Everyone loves to hate the media

September 5, 2008

So I tuned in to the Republican National Convention the other night to size up Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and enjoy the political theater, and you can imagine my surprise to find out she and Sen. John McCain are campaigning against Barack Obama, Joe Biden and … me.

Recent columns

• North eating up return on Internet

  September 3, 2008

  Perhaps the only person outrageous enough to suggest that former WSCR-AM 670 mainstay Mike North has anything in common with Barry Manilow would be North himself, and guess who's tryin' to get the feeling again.

• Cubs 1, relaunched '90210' 0

  August 31, 2008

  The Cubs, who have put a hurt on just about everyone coming up against them at home this season, are scheduled to play the Houston Astros Tuesday night at Wrigley Field.

• Sun-Times still in a trap without 'rat'

  August 29, 2008

  Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert—long the Chicago Sun-Times' heart, soul and conscience—hated hated hated the way sports columnist Jay Mariotti bemoaned the state of the newspaper industry in general and the Sun-Times in particular after quitting the paper this week.

• Mariotti: Love-hate even in exit

  August 28, 2008

  My memory of Jay Mariotti at his most Mariotti-est goes back 10 years, when we were sharing an apartment in Nagano, Japan, while covering the Winter Games for the Sun-Times.

• Expansion thins CNN's Chicago staff

  August 20, 2008

  What CNN is calling expansion will mean reducing the number of staffers assigned to its bureau in Chicago by 25 percent, to nine from a dozen.

• Conventions need Olympic-style splash

  August 17, 2008

  Confident that Michael Phelps was not a digital special effect produced by the Chinese equivalent of Industrial Light & Magic, U.S. TV viewers have been way into NBC's coverage of the Beijing Summer Olympics so far.

• Bears line up with 'One City, One Team,' a spirited multimedia effort that is the team's first ad campaign in years

  August 14, 2008

  It may be a bear economic market, but the Chicago Bears are bullish.

• Chicago gets its very own HuffPo site

  August 13, 2008

  As Arianna Huffington talked on the phone about hopes and dreams for one child, she was interrupted in midsentence by another.

• Fox Business ad: Give us a twirl

  August 10, 2008

  CNBC will have the Olympic Games.

• Sun-Times weighs own private turn

  August 8, 2008

  Chicago Sun-Times parent Sun-Times Media Group thinks it might be able to shave $10 million in 2009 expenses just by going private or deregistering its stock under federal securities laws.

• WFLD closing in on news co-anchor

  August 6, 2008

  Jeff Goldblatt, a Chicago-based correspondent for Fox News Channel, has emerged as the odds-on choice to become Robin Robinson's new co-anchor on Fox-owned WFLD-Ch. 32's 9 p.m. news.

• WLS should keep Wades, add Cassidy

  August 1, 2008

  Not that anything is likely to happen while WLS-AM 890-bound Pat Cassidy sits out the required three-week non-compete period following his now-lapsed WBBM-AM 780 contract—and, foolishly, no one has called for advice—but there's a smart strategy for Citadel Broadcasting staring it in the face.

• WCIU-Ch. 26 losing station manager

  July 31, 2008

  WCIU-Ch. 26 station manager Fred Weintraub said he will leave the Weigel Broadcasting outlet in February.

• NBC makes news with WGN coup

  July 30, 2008

  The epicenter Tuesday was Larry Wert's NBC Tower office. Shock waves were felt not only at Tribune Tower and WGN-Ch. 9's headquarters, but as far away as Dallas.

• Cubs sale a dribbler instead of line drive

  July 27, 2008

  In a less complicated world, perhaps, Tribune Co. could just put the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field on eBay or StubHub and wait for the cash to show up in a PayPal account.

• Theater goes dark for Ebert, Roeper

  July 22, 2008

  The curtain has come down on "At the Movies With Ebert & Roeper."

• No shortage of nominees for local media hall of fame

  July 20, 2008

  With Howard Stern and Steve Dahl snubbed again in voting this year, and other major impact players such as Studs Terkel not even nominated, the so-called National Radio Hall of Fame remains as incomplete as Chicago's half-built Museum of Broadcast Communications, which may house it someday yet.

• In neutral on Leno, NBC risks plenty

  July 18, 2008

  With less than a year until NBC is scheduled to retire Jay Leno as host of "The Tonight Show," the network had better make nice with late-night TV's top-rated star in a hurry to keep him from joining a rival network and competing with successor Conan O'Brien.

• Kern sets out to realize new media reality

  July 16, 2008

  Gerould Kern remembers Christmas Eve of 1990, the day he was offered a job at the Chicago Tribune, as one of the happiest of his life.

• TV, papers crossing paths in future of news

  July 13, 2008

  Two industrywide media business trends crisscrossed last week within Tribune Co.

• David Carradine's 'legendary' faux pas

  July 12, 2008

  The free-wheeling "WGN Morning News" on Friday was more free than usual, as guest David Carradine, live on the air, casually dropped one of the words you're not supposed to say on TV.

• Jacobson's suit seems TV-friendly

  July 11, 2008

  Regardless of whether a jury finds merit in the $1 million-plus lawsuit former WMAQ-Ch. 5 reporter Amy Jacobson and her family filed this week against WBBM-Ch. 2 parent CBS and others for airing videotape of her in swimming attire at the home of a potential source last summer, there may be some ancillary benefit.

• Same old story, brand new cuts

  July 9, 2008

  It's not as though the Chicago Tribune would rerun old stories to reduce costs, but you can be excused for feeling as though you've read this one before:

• Amy Jacobson sues Channel 2

  July 8, 2008

  It took a year, but Amy Jacobson has gone from swimsuit to lawsuit.

• Limbaugh goes against grain, again

  July 6, 2008

  Hardly a day goes by when one traditional media outfit or another, bemoaning how audience and revenue are slipping away, sends employees a sad memo about the urgent need to reduce costs, reduce staff, reduce expectations if not ambitions.

• When old scripts get rewritten

  July 2, 2008

  So NBC is driving "Knight Rider" into the era of $4-a-gallon gas, The CW is updating "Beverly Hills, 90210" and ABC is toying with a revival of the short-lived dramedy "Cupid" in hopes viewers will fall in love this time.

• Act now; Cubs are standing by

  June 29, 2008

  Why should public broadcasters be the only ones allowed to pester their audience for support? It was Guy Caballero, the fictional boss of faux network SCTV, who in 1981 advanced the revolutionary revenue idea: Pledge breaks for everyone.

• Mariotti a natural for radio show

  June 25, 2008

  Those taken aback by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti's criticism of his colleagues and the rest of the local sports and media establishment missed the real revelation of his verbal jousting with John Callaway on WTTW-Ch. 11 the other day.

• Tribune delivers 'jolt' in Orlando

  June 22, 2008

  The redesigned Orlando Sentinel that hit doorsteps Sunday morning was loud enough to not just wake up folks in central Florida but down in Ft. Lauderdale, here in Chicago, as far away as Los Angeles and everywhere else parent Tribune Co. owns a paper.

• Can HuffPo be papers' best friend?

  June 22, 2008

  Arianna Huffington is planting her flag—or at least a Post—in Chicago this summer.

• Printing paper a survival exercise

  June 18, 2008

  Running a treadmill. Pedaling a stationary bike. Sweating out a steam.

• Mark Cuban puts Cubs-Brewers game on his schedule

  April 30, 2008

  Sure, Tribune Co. chief Sam Zell has said the Chicago Cubs' financial books would go out around now, but it's a ballgame not a book signing Wednesday that will bring potential buyer Mark Cuban to see the Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers at Wrigley Field.

• Blackhawks skating over to WGN-AM

  April 30, 2008

  Here come the Hawks … to WGN-AM 720.

• Amy Jacobson to discuss 'Law & Order'

  March 12, 2008

  NBC's "Law & Order" at 9 p.m. Wednesday on WMAQ-Ch. 5 has Lara Flynn Boyle playing what the network describes as "an ambitious reporter ... who uses her sexuality to try to break" a murder case involving a soon-to-be ex-wife.

• CEO Sam Zell to Tribune workers: 'This is a crisis'

  February 20, 2008

  Tribune Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Sam Zell's tour of company properties brought him back to Tribune Tower on Tuesday. His meeting with Chicago Tribune personnel reached a dramatic pitch when Public Editor Timothy J. McNulty told Zell his profanity-laced remarks elsewhere raised concerns among staff, particularly women.

• Murdoch given an audience in Dow Jones bid

  June 1, 2007

  If money didn't talk, there wouldn't be a Dow Jones & Co. empire.

• NBC needs to keep its two hosts happy

  May 25, 2007

  An executive at NBC Universal recently was dismissing the latest iteration of long-standing rumors that parent General Electric Co. might look to unload the division.

• NBC News' cost-cutting gets stone-cold

  May 23, 2007

  In its effort to rein in costs, NBC News is leaving no Stone unturned.

• Nerds have their revenge in prime time

  May 20, 2007

  Outcasts are in. Clumsy is cool. Awkward is awesome. Minds are beautiful.

• TV's prime time to sell

  May 13, 2007

  For a few days this week, as they do each May, the broadcast television networks will produce the kind of lavish all-star spectaculars that fell out of favor about the time the novelty of TV in color wore off.

• Couric feeling more at ease

  April 22, 2007

  There were times, toward the end, when Katie Couric said she felt she had "outgrown" NBC's "Today" show, its lighter segments on occasion making her feel "more like a game-show host than a journalist."

• The Times they are a-changin'?

  April 6, 2007

  David Geffen has made no secret he covets the Los Angeles Times and thinks he can help it.That was true last year when the entertainment mogul dangled $2 billion but failed to budge Tribune Co. from its stance the paper wasn't for sale.

• Black's trial no big deal for city

  March 14, 2007

  With the trial about to begin and 300-some TV and print reporters put through a special credentialing process to cover it, Canadians keep asking me just how big a story this Conrad Black case is down here.

• Tribune Co. wants Fox `Red Eye' title closed

  February 18, 2007

  Ask anyone who's ever had too good a time: Red eyes tend to come in pairs.

• Bickering blocs at Tribune Co. may work it out

  August 4, 2006

  Are the Chandlers and Tribune Co. ready to reconcile?

• Tribune Co. chief recovering from cancer surgery

  August 1, 2006

  Dennis FitzSimons, Tribune Co.'s chairman, president and chief executive, is recovering from surgery Monday for prostate cancer but expects to be back to work full time before the end of August, the Chicago-based media concern said.

• Tribune considering ads on section fronts

  July 20, 2006

  With the traditional media business under increasing pressure to boost revenue, newspapers are finding it harder to ignore the value of their most coveted real estate.

• When the news breaks in your back yard, dig

  June 16, 2006

  As a reporter, when you have a personal stake in a story, you're supposed to beg off the assignment. When the story is about the company you work for, you're supposed to dig in and not let go.

• No terms of endearment, no reading between lines

  June 15, 2006

  It is just as well Hallmark doesn't make a greeting card for all occasions. "Roses are red/We're feeling blue/You're costing us money/Here's what to do" doesn't really cut it when a company's second-largest shareholder bloc wants to register its dissatisfaction.

• Given options, Tribune could rewrite script

  June 9, 2006

  Even those of us who haven't seen the new Vince Vaughn-Jennifer Aniston movie "The Break Up" have found it impossible to avoid hearing about it.

• Not all behind Tribune buyback

  June 8, 2006

  The opening of a major rift on Tribune Co.'s board, with a bloc of three directors standing in opposition to eight others, may portend more turbulence for the embattled Chicago media concern.

• Bold strategy to shape Tribune chief's legacy

  June 4, 2006

  With his silver-flecked hair and neatly trimmed mustache, Tribune Co. Chairman, President and CEO Dennis FitzSimons has the look of media maverick Ted Turner.

• Tribune sets buyback

  May 31, 2006

  Tribune Co., in a move that aims to boost its stock price but saddle the company with a punishing debt load, on Tuesday disclosed a plan to buy back a quarter of its outstanding shares at a cost of more than $2 billion.