Rot Never Sleeps

Newspapers all over the country are in trouble. In our slavish desire for speed, we consume news via social media. Not because it's more in-depth or more accurate, but because it's faster.

It's also unvetted. Unconsidered. Full of errors. And reliant on questionable sources. But yes, it is faster.

Playing the dragging-my-heels Luddite while the rest of the world rockets off into supersonic cyberspace is an act fraught with futility. I am not going to change a thing. The world is going to do what the world is going to do.

Sigh.

Along with internal combustion engines, record stores, grilling with charcoal, movie theaters and book stores, newspapers face a questionable future. Those that haven't already merged or consolidated are being devoured by what I like to refer to as vulture capitalists.

Like the Chicago Tribune, currently being ingested by Alden Global Capital.

Armed with vast reserves of cash, funds like Alden swoop in, buy a controlling interest and proceed to dismantle its target like car thieves in a chop shop. They sell off the components with the expectation the ala carte sale will generate more revenue than a bundled one.

It its wake are the employees—usually left unemployed with little in the way of severance or pensions. 

I'm no businessman, but I believe had the Tribune not gone public and consequently made itself vulnerable to this parasite, it would have survived. It was a formidable newspaper with a devoted readership.

Not so long ago, it would take me a morning and a good part of the afternoon to plow through the Sunday edition. It was stuffed with local and international news of every stripe, reported by a robust network of bureaus and correspondents stationed all over the world.

Music, art, film, books, sports, politics, transportation, business and any kind of conceivable feature all received similar attention. It was the world at your fingertips, strained through a now-irrelevant filter of fact-checking and confirmation.

An old saw of journalism went “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” You know—like it was going to be on Fox News or social media or something. Newspapers like the Tribune were a gathering place, a shared link between people. They provided a sense of community.

In their place is a hopelessly fragmented media landscape playing to impossibly divergent interests. We have retreated into hyper-demographic social media bubbles which insist anyone who doesn't fit the profile is not to be trusted.

To many of you I'm just a tiresome old man bemoaning the loss of another cultural touchstone. But I'm thinking it's highly probable I'm correct about the coarse and merciless future we're building, and what role this event plays in it. 

So. John Kass, Dahleen Glanton, Heidi Stevens, Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn are gone. Alden Global Capital has paid them to go away. On the surface? A dent in a local newspaper's appeal. But taking the longer view, it is another step forward in our inevitable construction of the Tower of Babel.

It is so very, very sad. But at least Alden Global Capital will get rich(er). 

And isn't that we're all about?

Eric Zorn

There's no evidence Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn ever worked for the Illinois Department of Weights and Measures, which is a bit ironic because Zorn's writing is both weighty and measured. 

His is the clear-eyed voice of reason in a time where the beating of the partisan drum is what typically passes for fact-based thought.

I finish his pieces feeling they should be mandatory reading for Democrat and Republican alike.

He has powerfully advocated for ranked choice voting, answered the critics who oppose the repeal of Illinois' ludicrous flat tax and landed a solid body blow to Trump's somnambulant response to the Coronavirus and the misanthropes who refuse to don a face mask amidst a pandemic.

Unlike the blog you're reading now, Zorn refrains from name-calling and profanity, perhaps enjoying the advantage of writing for a newspaper expected to observe a certain level of decorum.

Whether he's writing from rage or anger or merely possesses a different point of view, he calmly and purposefully builds his argument and arrives at conclusions that don't routinely skew to one side of the aisle or the other.

But they always make sense. They always add up. And sometimes, they even provoke the admission that yes, my party/candidate/agenda doesn't always provide the best answer.

Sadly, paper media is an endangered species. The Tribune itself is now owned by Alden Global Capital, a concern Vanity Fair lovingly described as “The hedge fund vampire that bleeds newspapers dry.”

Ask yourself: what's a newspaper compared to some Wall Street fuck becoming wealthier?

Point being, read Eric Zorn and “Change of Subject” while you can. As we should all understand so very, very well by now, nothing is promised.

The Newspaper

I am decidedly old school. My phone is connected to the wall. I listen to music on something that could never fit into a pocket. And I unlock my car with a key.

I also read newspapers.

Little holds the promise that a Sunday newspaper does. In its beautiful heft lies the world. International, national and local news. Sports. The Arts. Travel. Business, automobiles, real estate. Op-Ed pieces actually called Op-Ed pieces (and not news). Nothing is like reclining on a couch or bed and exploring its crisp, creased recesses.

Best of all, newspapers always work. They never crash—and they’ve been wireless since day one. There are no dead zones. No pop ups. There’s never a problem with connection speed. Or passwords. Or viruses. And if they get wet, they dry instead of die.

And another thing: ever hear of someone getting carpel tunnel syndrome from paging through a newspaper?

Inevitably, they also have their critics. “They’re old and slow.” “By the time they come out you’ve already heard everything.” “They take a whole day to be updated.”

All true. And that is the crowning glory of a newspaper. It is slow. Tell me the advantage of a media where speed replaces insight and speculation trumps fact. Wasn’t there a reason we frowned on knee-jerk reactions?

The dissolution of newspapers raises another concern. In a world fragmented by PDAs and texts and cell phones and blogs and instant messages and Blackberries, what is our common denominator? Where do we gather to commiserate? To laugh? To cry? To debate?

In a world of participatory media, do we risk becoming a society of writers without readers? Speakers without listeners?

The Tower of Babel springs to mind.

Yes, I am old school. Laugh at my ink-stained fingers if you must. But at 30,000 feet, tell me who’ll be laughing when we realize we left our respective media in the departure lounge.