Thursday, January 05, 2006

 

rah rah sis boom blah

Like most of the writers for this blog, I once worked at my high school newspaper. High school papers all over the country have to deal with a whole slew of problems, but one of the most annoying was being harangued about how we weren't doing enough for school spirit. Nearly every issue someone proposed the "why is school spirit so low" story. And just about any victory made someone push for a sports story at the top of the front page. What I told people then is what I would still say now -- when a sports story is big enough to affect non-fans, that's when it should take up part of the news hole.

RedEye's cover feature yesterday is not that kind of story. In fact, it's hard to see how it's a story at all. Chicagosports.com (another Tribune property, of course) ran an online poll asking people whether Chicago is a Bears Town, a Cubs Town, a Sox Town, etc. The Bears came in with a Bush-sized majority 51.8 percent. Never mind that online polls are notoriously unreliable. Never mind that people are far more likely to prefer the football team during football season. And never mind that this question doesn't mean much anyway (what Cubs fan who has ever been south of the Loop would describe Chicago as a "Cubs Town"?). Even if this poll was legit or even interesting, it only deserves a sidebar's worth of space. Instead, it gives birth to a monstrosity of a Bears cover story, which supposedly runs for four pages. But then the cover doesn't even mention the one piece of news driving the story -- the poll! They could have at least pegged the story to playoffs, rather than just making a generalized statement about how much Chicago loves "Da..." (no, I won't say it, if I hear the stupid catchphrase one more time I'll shoot myself).

In short -- capturing the mood of the city, good. Doing it through a half-assed poll that also conveniently supports another Tribune property, bad.

ALSO: I'm just not convinced that Jon Ibrahim has actually watched Sex and the City. If so, he would not write about how Mr. Big put Carrie "in a position to have her chase him their entire relationship" in his paean to the show in today's "Sex Playbook." In fact, if anything the "Big" character shows the insecurities of apparent "alpha males" like Ibrahim. You don't need to be a fan to know this... any number of Web sites (or, God forbid, a call to HBO) could have filled the columnist in on the plot of the series. Perhaps Ibrahim would be ready with another high school newspaper response: "It's opinion! I don't need to do any reporting."

AND: Props to Red for this Ghostbusters reference in the sports section: "It's the Rose Bowl, the granddaddy of them all ... Two schools with live mascots. Cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria..." However, the actual quote is: "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria..." Bag Boy, there are plenty of unemployed Medill grads who would love to be your fact-checker...

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?