What does the neighborhood you live in say about you? That is a question popping up all over the place in a variety of ways lately as the City faces a significant change in leadership. more ›

News broke yesterday that "Brenda Starr," the comic strip about a plucky, resourceful, empowered and impossibly glamorous reporter, would run its last strip on Jan. 3. As Tribune media columnist Phil Rosenthal noted, Brenda Starr, like Little Orphan Annie six months ago, would go the way of the teletype. more ›

Not that the City Council doesn’t have better things to do than copycat a salt ban like the one being discussed in New York. But the Tribune’s Mary Schmich was concerned enough to dedicate a recent column to the seemingly impossible-to-believe concept that we might follow the lead of a Brooklyn assemblyman who is trying to eliminate salt from New York restaurants. Sayeth Schmich: more ›

An e-mail from Tim Hadac at the City Department of Public Health announced that the North Avenue Whole Foods failed its reinspection. Now we can look forward to another inane Mary Schmich column on the closing. more ›

Send good thoughts Roger Ebert's way tomorrow. He's having surgery again. [S-T] more ›

Chicago has a lot of newspaper columnists. We've been watching them ebb and flow for years. But the good ones, or at least the ones we like, have stuck around. Mary Schmich at the Trib is one of them. Her columns inform, provoke thought, remind us to wear sunscreen, and usually cause us at one point or another to laugh out loud. On the Brown line. During rush hour. And then everyone stares. more ›

We wonder whether Bill Swerski's head exploded trying to ponder the winner of this Sunday's NFC title game, pitting the Chicago Bears against the New Orleans Saints — both teams formerly coached by Da Coach Known as Ditka. Would the final be 642-637? Would it be 1-0? Or did Ditka bestow some special greatness on Da Bears, that will allow them to pound the Saints 710-3? In reality, most of the media seems to be... more ›

It's easy for those unaffected by certain tragedies to carry on blithely as though nothing traumatic ever took place. We hear the news. We process it. But then we pick up and go about our days. It's how life works, after all, and if we processed all of the world's hurt there would be nothing left of us. We return to all of the mundane facets about our lives that have gone relatively unchanged, no matter how deeply we felt for those who were hurt. more ›

Chicago Tribune journalist Mary Schmich spent two months reporting on Cabrini-Green, getting to know both the people driving its transformation and the people affected by the changes. Her insightful reports range from a profile on the Cabrini-raised alderman of the ward, to a woman hell-bent on keeping the towers, to a young family's dreams of leaving. The reports delve into the politics, emotions, and future of Cabrini and are definitely worth the time it takes to read them. more ›