Results tagged “chicagotribune”

The Tribune is calling today's story about "Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan's incarcerated brother and his planned prison escape "Batman-like," which is good bait to get you into the story. But when you read deeper, it turns out that the tale being told isn't terribly Batty at all - it's only barely Dark Knight related. Which is not to say it's not a hell of a story - one which we're surprised hasn't been talked about much to date. (The conspirator part of our brain is saying "yeah, but that kind of talk might keep away other film companies, and that's bad for the city, so maybe...")

Ex-Tribune folks are everywhere these days. The latest example is over at The Reader, where a former Tribune managing editor, Jim Warren, has been appointed publisher. Warren said in a statement, "I believe the Reader can be an even greater success if it is provocative, makes those in power squirm and yet is willing to entertain and have fun. I hope I can be of help in renewing and reinventing the print version and finding new audiences on the Web.” The Reader's Michael Miner has more on the hire.

      

This morning, the folks at Copyranter posted some ads for the Chicago Tribune created by Canadian-based ad agency Juniper Park. We clicked around and found a complete set over at Ads of the World. The ads are pretty eye-catching, even if the copy on a few of the ads is a bit clunky, and stress the Trib's investigative reporting. [While the Trib always does good investigative reporting work - being at the center of last winter's Blago affair helped - we can't help but think that the city's best investigative reporting this year has actually been done by Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky over at The Reader.] We spoke with a rep at Juniper Park who confirmed the ads had run (we're still awaiting PR info pertaining to the markets where the ads are running and we place an email to the Tribune).

After yesterday's flashback to 1984, we jumped even further in the wayback machine for today's diversion, when a random search for Chicago videos unearthed this clip from a 1930's movie titled From Tress to Tribunes, profiling members of the Chicago Tribune cartoon staff.

And you thought Obama had approval rating issues. A new poll released by WGN and the Chicago Tribune claims that Cook County Board President Todd Stroger has an abysmal approval rating of 10 percent, which is even lower than Blago's was last fall before his arrest. The poll was made of 300 registered Cook County voters and a full 70 percent of those polled disapproved of Stroger and 72 percent said they don't want to see him re-elected.

• Adding fuel to the talk that Sam Zell's short reign at the Tribune is almost over, yesterday Trib bondholders filed a motion to probe into the billionaire's takeover of the newspaper.
• DAMMIT! Our bid was $39,999,999.
• Governor Quinn has vetoed a campaign finance bill, saying that it "should go back to the drawing board." Critics have complained the bill has too many loopholes.

Steppenwolf and Tracy Letts received their millionth award together - not really but it feels that way - for Superior Donuts, which takes August: Osage County’s place on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre in October. Superior Donuts won a citation, i.e. “runner up,” for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Award, administered by the American Theatre Critics Association. The award comes with $7,500, which isn’t a hefty sum considering Broadway tickets cost about half that. Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, which premiered at the Goodman last fall and won this year’s Pulitzer, was also named one of the 2008-2009 Best Plays by The Best Plays Theater Yearbook, an annual publication celebrating American theater.

Normally when you Google "krazy glue" and "penis"*** you get some strange results, but do so today and you might just get directed towards the Chicago Tribune where they've got the sticky story of women, wangs, and wayward husbands.

• North Shore Distillery's Sonja Kassebaum writes a loving profile of graham elliot beverage manager/head mixologist Lynn House (pictured). [Thinking of Drinking]
• Baconfest news: the Publican is hosting the VIP Pro cookoff the day before the fest. [Baconfestchicago.com]
• Mike Sula cheers the return of kaiseki master Seijero Matsumoto. [Food Chain]

• Wow, if you can't trust a fine city steward like Ald. Ed Burke to not be involved in shady dealings, who can you trust?
• This sounds like a plot from an episode of Rescue Me -- a 23rd Battalion Chief on the South Side is being investigated after he allegedly slept through a fire.
• And this sounds ripped from Nip/Tuck -- car dealer and ubiquitous TV ad presence Bob ROOOHRman is suing a plastic surgeon for "stealing" his wife. Life imitates FX.

In it's battle to obtain documents from the University of Illinois in connection with their investigation of the Clout College Controversy, the Chicago Tribune has stumbled upon a strange example of what they allege to be shenanigans: Ron Santo. While Santo has nothing at all to do with the controversy, it seems the school blacked out Santo's name in documents it handed over to the Trib which the Trib claims "violated the spirit of the law," in terms of their investigation. According to the Tribune's story:

We were astounded late Thursday night to read Phil Rosenthal's article about a recent breach of the traditional, and cherished, editorial-advertising wall at the newspaper. Not only did a survey sent out to readers share actual story tops and pitches from stories-in-progress with readers and former subscribers, but it revealed information that reporters felt might compromise additional reporting and was apparently done without the knowledge of editor Gerould Kern.

• We had this pop up about a dozen times in the inbox today: Google Map used to track Swine Flu.
• The Tribune takes a look at the new modern wing at the Art Institute, due to open in a few weeks and the possible ramifications of the new admission hike.
• Speaking of the Trib, Crain's is reporting today that circulation for the paper in the six months ranging from October '08 through March '09 is down 7.4 percent, while the Sun-Times also saw a drop, but a far smaller one of 0.04 percent. The decline for the Trib was right at about the national average of 7.1 percent.

If you can get past the staggering $15.5 Billion dollar figure in today's "Let's spend everything on the downtown area" story from the Tribune, you might get to exactly how terrifying things might get in the City. Worried about Block 37? Concerned about unnecessary Olympic-size spending? Bothered by a concentration on city-center construction in the face of the continued deterioration of Chicago's infrastructure? You'll love this.

When we were younger, our friend told us about a car his older brother was selling for the low price of $900. Sure, it looked a little ragged, what with the rust holes and the mismatched door, but we were assured that at its heart the car was solid, and could be revived back to its shiny, reliable former self with just a little bit of elbow grease. Six months later, after being stalled on the side of the road for the third time, we wound up giving it away to that cancer foundation with the annoying jingle. Well, Sam Zell is feeling the same way right now, except his error in judgment contained seven more zeros. In an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday, Zell said that he now thinks that his acquisition of the Chicago Tribune was a "mistake" and that he "was too optimistic in terms of the newspaper's ability to preserve its position." Huh, a business guy with zero experience in the newspaper industry was wrong about the direction said industry was heading -- imagine that.

Follow me if you can: Bo was born of Penny, who lives on Martha and Art Stern's farm. Penny was born of Pooka, who also was bred by the Sterns until Penny herself was of breeding age. At that point, Pooka, Bo's maternal grandmother, came to live with [DOT Chief Financial Officer Janet Forsgren].

Continue reading "Bo Knows Ray LaHood"

The Golden Globes and the Oscars may have come and gone, but awards season is still going. The League of Chicago Theatres gave out the 2009 Broadway in Chicago Emerging Theater Award to Rogers Park-based theater company, the side project, on April 1. While the mere giving of the award didn’t perk our news-gathering ears, the side project’s upcoming show The Rocks has us intrigued, partly due to the vague description on the website - "20-somethings talk about…stuff." Chicago Dramatists’ Resident Playwright Mark A. Young wrote the play as a follow-up to his successful New Orleans at the same company in 2006. The show is in repertory with The Bird Sanctuary, by award-winning playwright Lynne McMahon. (This show’s descriptions starts with “50-somethings”….the juxtaposition already has us excited/nervous.)

Since citydwellers have been collectively exercising their civic rebellion muscles this week* in terms of the ongoing parking meter revolt, we at the Flashback desk figured it could be illuminating to go back and see where this whole thing started. Not just with the sale of the city's parking meters to LAZ, no sir - we're setting the Wayback Machine for 1936, when the argument was raging about whether or not to install the things in the first place.

In the latest move to cut costs, the Tribune Company has announced it's combining the Chicago Tribune's and LA Times's international reporting departments. The new unit will be based out of Los Angeles and will serve all of the Tribune Company's papers. Chicago Tribune Editor Gerould Kern said, "At a time when there is more competition than ever for local audiences, we must bring people news and information that is unique and valuable. The new foreign operation will help us use our resources more effectively to succeed in the future." [AP via Trib]

How's everyone enjoying those gaping holes where all those WaMu outlets used to be? Nothing like a good vacant storefront where once a financial outpost used to operate, right? Guess what - this may seem obvious, but one lending official says it's possible that anywhere from 25-30 other banks around town might go under pretty soon.

The Chicago Tribune has had enough of the corruption that has been the big story in our state as of late (and over the years). Yesterday, in an editorial titled "State of Corruption," the Trib rededicated itself to editorial efforts to take on the scandalous lawmakers of our state and to repair The Land of Lincoln's reputation.

The Tribune's Sunday paper featured yet another picture of Barack Obama on the front page and included yet another "Inauguration 2009" special section. It seems the Tribune's only plan for selling more newspapers has been to put our photogenic first family on the front page. And that's really not a bad strategy, except that they seem to be running out of things to talk about.

      

A few days ago we put out the call for some Barack Obama Miis that would put the Tribune's version to shame. The planets must have aligned or something like that, because when we sat down last night to kick some serious ass on Dr. Mario Online Rx, guess who we found ourselves face to face against:

The Tribune had a wraparound yesterday laying out some of what they're calling progress in terms of their redesign, which you'll remember kicked off towards the tail end of last September. Editor Gerould Kern laid out what they've done, what they've changed since the redesign, and what they're going to continue to do. Cliff's Notes version: Business section is back, jumping stories to other sections is done, more clear-cut organization of the paper is being implemented, and "refining" the use of graphics is underway.

Well, that is some well deserved praise we can get down with, especially since Local H's 12 Angry Months was one of our favorite local discs of the year as well. [Trib]

This morning, the Chicago Tribune had an answer for President-Elect Barack Obama as to whether or not any of his staff talked to Gov. Rod Blagojevich about filling in Obama's vacant senate seat: yes and it was Rahm Emanuel. While the Tribune's story is careful to point out that Rahm and Blago's chats do not at all implicate Rahm, Obama, or anyone else in the Obama Administration as a participant in Balgo's pay-to-play scheme, it does raise questions about how much Rahm - who's been the source of a shit-ton of speculation this week - might or might not have known about the entire plan.

One source confirmed that communications between Emanuel and the Blagojevich administration were captured on court-approved wiretaps.

Continue reading "Trib: Rahm and Blagojevich Discussed Senate Seat"

What a week for Sam Zell. First, his company filed for bankruptcy on Monday. Then on Tuesday, Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested, partly for trying to extort the editorial board of the Zell-owned Chicago Tribune. And it's that last item that has the FBI curious to talk to Zell about what he knew and what he did in response to Blago's threats and attempts to have editor John McCormick fired in exchange for helping along the sale of Wrigley Field. While Zell said in a television interview he was contacted by the FBI, he denied a request by his own Chicago Tribune for an interview. The Tribune Company sticks by their recent assertion that their behavior has been "appropriate at all times."

AP Photo/Mark Carlson