The Chicago Tribune launched its high school–focused paper The Mash yesterday, distributing 100,000 copies to Chicago Public School students. The print and online edition are mostly written by high school students, who are paid between $10 and $25 for articles, with guidance and oversight by Trib staff. [CBS 2, Editor and Publisher]......

We'll stop the Jay Mariotti coverage one of these days, but this open letter from Roger Ebert is too damn good to pass up. It's titled "Jay the Rat," and it ends "On your way out, don't let the door bang you on the ass." Our love for Roger Ebert knows no bounds. Full missive after the jump. [Ebert]......

Jay Mariotti may be heading for Boston, according to Phil Rosenthal, who used to work with Mariotti and is not a fan. "One rumor on which Mariotti would not comment had him bound for Boston and an array of multimedia opportunities," Rosenthal writes today. "How he would find flaws in a city with defending champs in basketball and baseball is anyone's guess." Mariotti told the Boston Herald that that's not in the works, saying "I......

Photo by ankylosaur Hey, Steve Dahl wrote his monthly column today! Guess what? He's got a case of the Andy Rooneys: He doesn't get why people have tattoos. "I think you have to be drunk to want a tattoo," he says. Some people call a lower back tattoo on a woman a "tramp stamp." I would never do that, or even insinuate that, but any time I see someone sporting a permanent design on......

And the hits just keep on coming with this Jay Mariotti story. Sun-Times EIC Michael Cook issued a statement today touting the paper's sports coverage as "the best sports section in the city" and boasting of its remaining columnists, yada yada. The statement also included this: The Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com will continue to have the scores and the stories before anyone else, anywhere, and the deepest and most comprehensive stats and standings. We......

Editor and Publisher got a sneak peek at what could become the new Chicago Tribune - and it ain't pretty. The news that Red Eye founding editor Jane Hirt would be promoted to managing editor worried a lot of people, and now it appears that the Red-Eye-Ification of the Tribune goes much further than just personnel changes. The design has been completely redone, but the main change would be the name. Since 1847, "Chicago Tribune"......

ChuffPo* blogger Bahar Takhtehchian has concluded that because she doesn't like sports, her fellow female residents of Chicago must not—at least not really—either. "Do Chicago gals genuinely care about the fortunes of this city's sports teams? Are they sitting through hour after hour of endless sports for the love of the game ... or for the love of the men in their lives?" she asks. Well, concludes; that's the closing thought of her story, and......

Fox News took out a full-page ad in today's Tribune—oh, so that's who still advertising in the Trib—ragging on CNN and its restructuring plan that includes reducing its Chicago staff to 9 from 12. [TVNewser]......

WGN news anchor Allison Payne says she wasn't drunk during the broadcast on Thursday: She says her slurred speech was a result of the series of ministrokes she suffered earlier this year. Exhaustion and stress apparently exacerbate the effects of the ministrokes, and Payne says that last week "was extremely stressful." [Trib]......

And the masthead keeps on changing: The Chicago Tribune's new managing editor is Jane Hirt, founding editor of RedEye. [Editor and Publisher]......

Chicago Tribune editor Gerry Kern sent an email to staffers yesterday outlining his big plan for the future, which is to "strengthen our bond with readers by giving them the news, information and irresistible storytelling they desire in their lives. We will enlighten, provoke, surprise and entertain them. We want them to say, 'This is my Tribune and I can’t get along without it.'" His full missive plus his "Vision for reinventing the Chicago Tribune"......

Well, is it?......

WBEZ's experimental user-generated Vocalo station has a Twitter feed. And they want to hear from you! Badly! If you pledged to WBEZ, your money's going to Vocalo. More after the jump.........

The "powerful white Tribune columnist" who apparently shouted at a colleague and challenged him to a fight? Yeah, it was John Kass.......

The Trib's newsroom layoffs disproportionately targeted journalists of color, according to one of the dismissed reporters, Ray Quintanilla. "It's sad because if you look at the list, it's heavily minority. It looks bad," [Quintanilla] told Journal-isms. He said his marching orders came a day after he challenged a powerful white Tribune columnist who for the fifth time had hired a white assistant, asking the columnist if he had considered any people of color. He recalled......

"Bad Driving, Badder Drivers." And even badderer headlines!......

Two weird things from this inane Sun-Times article about new parents trying to prep their pets for the arrival of human spawn. One: "Gone is the old wives' tale of offering a used diaper to an animal to acclimate it to the newest person in the house." That's...an old wives' tale? Two: the term "fur baby" to describe a pet. I love my pets as much as any other lunatic, but "fur baby" is pushing......

In a letter to shareholders yesterday, the Sun-Times Media Group painted a pretty grim picture of the paper's state of affairs. It's no secret that the newspaper industry is in rough shape. Our industry's advertising revenues are being depressed by the significant declines in the industries that are most important to us - housing, real estate, employment, autos and, increasingly, retail. Some of the issues affecting our advertising revenue are economic, while others are secular.......

Those Tyra-Banks-as-Michelle-Obama photos are finally online. They're not very fierce.......

The Sun-Times interviewed hundreds of first-through-eighth graders and found that "half of all fifth- through eighth-graders said their 'greatest fear' was gun- or shooting-related." According to the report, "nearly three-quarters" of fifth-through-eighth graders said they heard gun shots in their neighborhood, and nearly two-thirds of fifth-graders "specifically listed guns or a shooting as their biggest fear." The students surveyed attend schools in Lawndale, West Town and Woodlawn, and the Sun-Times says the survey "offer[s] a......

Weigel Broadcasting, the local company behind The U, MeTV and MeToo, has announced that this fall it'll be partnering with MGM to produce a new, nationwide digital TV channel to be called This TV. When stations go all-digital in February, there will be many broadcasters that won't be able to fill the new subchannels, due to lack of funds and/or programming. This TV aims to fill the gap, available for lease to broadcasters who......

Today's big danger: Texting while walking! Holy moly, is it ever time to be afraid. Particularly of twin bullshit stories, neither of which identify anyone who has actually been injured. To the Sun-Times and the Tribune: Anecdotal evidence from a 30-something woman Trib: "Kelly Scheiner of Streeterville had many errands to run... And so, a silver Nordstrom bag draped over her left forearm, she marched north on Michigan Avenue, crossing Illinois Street at a crisp......

"'Alcohol, plus girls, plus guys, plus crowds equal fights.'" Eric Hagen, 17, on last night's cluster of fistfights at the O.A.R. concert "There seems to me no question that the Batman film The Dark Knight, currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war." — Andrew Klavan......

Interim Trib publisher Bob Gremillion sent a less-than-thrilling e-mail to Trib staffers today outlining the paper's plans for the future. "We've already announced newsroom staff reductions, but our dire economic situation requires us to implement further cuts elsewhere in the company," he wrote in the e-mail. "We've not yet determined the total scope of the reductions, but they will be involuntary." Full memo after the jump.......

Photo by Brian Hagy "He's not dead, that's the main thing." —Bob Novak, who's having the worst week ever, on the pedestrian he hit this morning. Also, Novak drives a black Corvette. [Trib] "It's not as if there was a Moses of mayonnaise who handed down the first jar." — John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in......

Roger Ebert announced today that he too is leaving Ebert & Roeper, which means that poor ampersandy bastard has to run the show all by himself; Richard Roeper already announced his departure. In a statement he released today, Ebert writes "The [thumbs] trademark still belongs to me and Marlene Iglitzen, Gene [Siskel]'s widow, and the thumbs will return. We are discussing possibilities, and plan to continue the show's tradition."......

On the left, the Trib's front page from June 14, 2008 (via). On the right, today's Orlando Sentinel, which may be what the Trib will look like in the next few months. Changes are afoot at the Tribune, and not just in staffing. Newly installed editor Gerould Kern is overseeing a complete redesign, according to Crain's. A new look has been in the works for a while, but it's moving ahead faster than scheduled......

Is Vocalo bleeding WBEZ dry? That's how it looks from this week's Hot Type. Three weeks ago [President and general manager of Chicago Public Radio Torey Malatia] held a staff meeting and announced some bad news: there wasn’t enough money. This meant that WBEZ’s top project, Right Now, a daily afternoon news show with a producer Malatia had hired away from NPR's Talk of the Nation, was being shelved. The Sunday arts program Hello Beautiful......

This year's presidential race has been a national dialogue on what matters to Americans at this point in our nation's history. But it's also been a sometimes difficult debate on the very real gender, ethnic and racial tensions that lie just underneath our country's perception of itself. A week after Jesse Jackson apologized to Barack Obama for vulgar remarks made to a colleague when he thought his microphone was turned off, new footage reveals that......

Chicago Tribune editor Anne Marie Lipinski resigned today, just a week after the Trib announced cuts in its newsroom staff. In a memo she sent to staffers, Lipinski said her last day will be Thursday and that it's "inaccurate to attribute [her resignation] to any one event." Although we could probably attribute it to any one guy, and his name starts with a Sam and ends with a Z-E-L-L. Gerould W. Kern, Tribune Publishing's vice......