Friday, January 27, 2006
Who's on front?
What dominates the front of Red, the Tribune and the Sun-Times today?
The election in Palestine of a party of religious fanatics?
The bitter Supreme Court nomination battle?
No. It's Oprah's televised festival-o'-pain in honor of fibbing memoir author James Frey.
We berated Red yesterday for burying the Palestine story. But that didn't really surprise anyone. What saddens me is that the Tribune, a paper I respect for its coverage, made the same lapse in news judgment. Other national papers played up the Oprah story but led with the Hamas story.
The Trib not only led with Oprah, it also dedicated a gauntlet of columns and a triumphant editorial to this absurd public guilt trip. We don't need our newspapers to stretch this out. Of course, some of these columnists have nothing better to write about anyway, but it is discouraging that the Trib allows them all to write about the same thing. Isn't it a columnist's job to cover a specific area of expertise distinct from other columnists' beats? And isn't the whole point of columnists to provide a variety of opinions and stories?
Now, one could argue that Chicago papers should lead with this because Oprah is based here. But that doesn't mean that A Million Little Pieces affected Chicago readers any more than it affected readers elsewhere.
The election in Palestine of a party of religious fanatics?
The bitter Supreme Court nomination battle?
No. It's Oprah's televised festival-o'-pain in honor of fibbing memoir author James Frey.
We berated Red yesterday for burying the Palestine story. But that didn't really surprise anyone. What saddens me is that the Tribune, a paper I respect for its coverage, made the same lapse in news judgment. Other national papers played up the Oprah story but led with the Hamas story.
The Trib not only led with Oprah, it also dedicated a gauntlet of columns and a triumphant editorial to this absurd public guilt trip. We don't need our newspapers to stretch this out. Of course, some of these columnists have nothing better to write about anyway, but it is discouraging that the Trib allows them all to write about the same thing. Isn't it a columnist's job to cover a specific area of expertise distinct from other columnists' beats? And isn't the whole point of columnists to provide a variety of opinions and stories?
Now, one could argue that Chicago papers should lead with this because Oprah is based here. But that doesn't mean that A Million Little Pieces affected Chicago readers any more than it affected readers elsewhere.
