John Bracken

Robert Sharoff (via Romenesko) profiles a journalism pioneer, Windy City Times publisher Jeff McCourt. Sharoff chronicles the McCourt’s 1985 founding of the WCT during– an eventful era for both Chicago and gay politics. According to Sharoff, McCourt and his colleagues created a paper that was both a journalistic enterprise and and advocate for the gay community during the first years of the AIDS crisis.

The highlight of the paper’s early years was undoubtedly the passage of the Human Rights Ordinance. The bill had been languishing in the city council since 1973, when it finally came up for a vote in the summer of 1986 and was solidly defeated. Within days, a lobbying effort began to reintroduce the bill, with McCourt playing a leading role. “I remember Jeff saying, ‘Here are the desks, here are the phones, here are the typewriters. Whatever you need, do it. Get it done,’” says [activist Rick] Garcia. “We called Windy City’s offices Ordinance Central,” says [journalist Albert] Williams, who was one of a number of activists working on the campaign.

Two weeks before Christmas in 1988, the slightly retooled bill sailed to passage. The subsequent victory party—held that night at Ann Sather on West Belmont Avenue—felt like a watershed moment. Among the dozens of politicos and media figures who felt compelled to make an appearance and offer their congratulations to McCourt and the assembled crowd were the two most powerful politicians in the city: the then mayor, Eugene Sawyer, and the future mayor Richard M. Daley.

Suddenly the people “who know nobody and who nobody knows” were being perceived as an important swing vote well worth courting in future elections.

Sharoff also makes the case that the Windy City Times was an innovator “on the business side.”

“He recognized that we needed to bring in standard publishing ideas,” says [Wall Street Journalist reporter and former WCT editor Mark] Schoofs. “We were one of the first gay papers in the country to have a real-estate issue, a fashion issue. Jeff’s thinking was that if we created these advertising venues, the advertisers would come. He also wanted straight advertisers like car and beer companies. He understood that this is journalism, it’s a business, and it needs to be done right.”

“Jeff always said, ‘My competition is not GayLife. It’s the Reader and the Tribune,’” recalls Williams. Over the years, McCourt would get almost every advertiser he wanted—everyone from Neiman Marcus to IBM.

McCourt, who died earlier this year of complications from AIDS, comes across as sad and lonely. Jennifer Vanasco remembered him after learning of his death:

Jeff was the first person to take a chance on me, a young writer, eventually giving me the column I still write.

Jeff was difficult, needy, an asshole, a bastard. He would storm through our windowless office sucking on cigarettes and booming out curses or praises, depending on his mood. I am grateful for his early support—and I wish I could be sorry about his death. When I was hired, he was already deep in decline, from drugs, from AIDS, from his pinwheeling narcissism. But it’ thanks to him that the WCT—and eventually the Chicago Free Press–became the papers they did.

Michael Miner announced McCourt’s death in the Reader; the piece includes remembrances by former colleagues in the comments section.

Chicago loves its sports teams and in today’s Tribune David Haugh makes the case that nothing captures the city’s imagination than a great Bears team. Alas, the only way Lovie’s boys will eclipse the 85 team is if they run the table and go, dare I say it, 19-0. Chet Coppock has the best line in Haugh’s piece when he says the 2006 team “will never put the side headlock on Madison Avenue or Michigan Avenue the way the ‘85 Bears did, so help me George Halas…The roar of Papa Bear, the cutting edge of Ditka, ‘Sweetness,’ ‘Hamp,’ ‘Mongo,’ ‘Silky D,’ and an offensive line that would’ve made Hulk Hogan leap over the top rope made ‘85 a year that will not be repeated. This current club has people excited but not galvanized.” Chester continued the theme on his show this morning, noting that this team “hasn’t opened themselves up as characters” the way the “mythical” 85 team did. Meanwhile, Rick Telander’s Friday column reports on an aborted locker room interview with new Bear superstar Tommie Harris and concludes that this Gen Y team has some growing to do before it fully wins our hearts:

It wasn’t even 1 o’clock and the NFL-mandated 45-minute media session wasn’t over yet, but Kreutz was swiftly joined by many of his teammates, who screamed at the top of their lungs, made fire-alarm noises, siren noises, animal noises and bellowed for the media to get out right now, many with threatening gestures…Others pointed and smirked and turned on the few remaining media members the way a gang of bullies would turn on handicapped kids with lunch money in their pockets.

It was an amazing, frightening transformation. The air of physical harm loomed….Tight end John Gilmore glared and angrily screamed, ”GET OUT OF HERE!”…We humans equate winning with immortality, triumph with virtue….Good luck, Tommie Harris. Hope you and your buddies can learn how to be men.

Finally, Brad Biggs compares the marketing prowess of the two teams:

There’s a big difference between players today and the ones from two decades ago — and it involves an extra comma in the paychecks. Salaries have skyrocketed, and athletes today don’t need the supplementary income as much. Still, it’s not bad to have, and a lot of the work is done on their day off Tuesday….’”Our dear beloved coach had the greatest saying of all time,” Hampton said. ”’To the victor go the spoils.”’

Of course, comparing the two teams is unfair: 1985 was a different media era: Tomorrow night’s Bears-Cardinals game is unlikely to come anywhere close to the 30 rating/46 share that the 1985 Bears-Dolphins game earned (the highest rated game in MNF history) . Indeed few programs other than the Super Bowl will ever come close to drawing 30% of American homes– last week Patch Adams Grey’s Anatomy topped the Nielsens with a 15 rating.

Second, as good as a job as he’s doing, Lovie Smith is no Mike Ditka. (Viewing this video, maybe that’s a good thing.)

Third, though this team may turn out to be a better team (!?), they will never pull off anything like this.

Whatever happened to that promised Steve Albini-produced reunion album?

On Tuesday, the Sun-Times’ SCOTT FORNEK AND STEVE PATTERSON reported on a poll the Tarrance Group did on the race for Cook County President on behalf of Republican candidate Tony Peraica. (A Republican hasn’t won County wide since at least the Bulls last championship, but this year,a series of Democratic Party shenanigans has led many to consider defecting to the GOP.) From the article:

Republican Tony Peraica released an internal campaign poll Monday that shows him leading Democrat Todd Stroger by eight percentage points in the race for Cook County Board president. The GOP Cook County commissioner was beating the Democratic alderman from the 8th Ward, 48 percent to 40 percent, with 12 percent of voters undecided….Peraica’s latest poll was conducted Oct. 2-5 by the Tarrance Group of Alexandria, Va. It’s based on a random sample of 400 likely voters and has an error margin of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points, according to a memo written by the pollster.

It’s late, but let’s do the math: a margin of error of 4.9 percent, when subtracted from Peraica’s 48% and added to Stroger’s 40% means the poll shows that the race is a statistical tie.

“Changes afoot”

At the fall equinox, the leading contender for Chicago media story of the year is the promised restructuring of the Tribune Company. (Among the Tribunes local holdings are WGN AM, WGN TV, CLTV, Chicago Magazine, Satisfaction Magazine, the free daily sheet RedEye, Hoy Chicago, the Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field, ticket scalping firm Wrigley Field Premium Tickets, web properties ChicagoTribune.com, Metromix., and ChicagoSports.com and the landmark neo-Gothic Tribune Tower.)

From Friday’s coverage of Thursday’s board meeting:

After a five-hour board meeting Thursday, Tribune Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Dennis FitzSimons said he will substantially restructure the company in a process overseen by a committee of independent board members. “Everything’s on the table,” FitzSimons said after the meeting…FitzSimons and other sources said possibilities include taking the company private in a leveraged buyout, spinning off the company’s televisions stations and selling some newspapers. The committee hopes to approve a plan by the end of the year.

Calling Local Egotists and Satans

In light of the Tribune announcement and the failures and subsequent break-ups of other media super-conglomerates, Jarvis is amused by “all the mewling about big, bad, media consolidation. The mewlers needn’t waste their breathy angst on media companies getting bigger. The big ones are toppling of their own weight.”

But he adds a warning:

To those who celebrate that some newspapers will be freed from the yoke of remote corporate parents as they are bought up by local egotists, beware: New cash from would-be moguls and kingmakers in local markets will only stave off the inevitable.

Jarvis points to Jack Shafer’s examination of possible billionaire contenders for the LA Times, including philanthropist (and ethically-challenged real estate mogul) Eli Broad: “What would Broad’s L.A. broadsheet look like?” Shafer asks. He excerpts a June New York Times piece:

If the real estate billionaire Eli Broad had his way, the Los Angeles Times would run more photographs of donors at charity events. There would be fewer stories on movies and more about the city’s museums and classical arts. And it would champion civic projects, becoming, in his view, the glue to unite a diverse and fractured city.

Shafer concludes that “the least bad candidate for Los Angeles Times owner turns out to be Tribune. I know they’re perfect Satans, but they’re the Satans journalists understand. At least they know something about running newspapers.”

So, what Chicago “egotists” and “Satans” might bid for parts of the Trib’s local empire?

III. A New Hope

For those unfamiliar with the state of my local baseball franchise, the Chicago Cubs are a disaster. As early as spring training, Chuck at Ivy Chat has been reading the Tribune tea leaves desperate for signs that they may be planning to sell the Cubs. Thus, he followed Thursday’s board meeting closely. Chuck’s not convinced a sale is imminent, but concludes that even new management that “would take a more civic approach to the Cubs and less of a shareholder value approach tha[n] the current board (correctly and appropriately) has…What is imminent at this time is simply this: Major changes will occur at Trib Corp over the next 180 days. None of this can be bad for fans of the Chicago Cubs.” In the comments section , CT adds that “the only way a new ownership could be worse is if they came to my house and set me on fire,”—though I rather like the idea of a Craig Hodges Day.

IV. Towing the Company Line

I haven’t been one to complain about the Tribune’s coverage of its owned and operated Cubs—there are a couple more important issues locally— but Paul Sullivan sounds as though he’s taking dictation from Dennis Fitzsimmons with this lead to a summary of Friday’s loss: “Will Aramis Ramirez hold the Cubs hostage next month, or will negotiations over a new contract go smoothly?” he asks. So, exercising a contracted right to consider exiting from the contract is holding the poor Tribune Co. hostage? (For the record, I’m not in favor of locking up through 2011 an aging, over-weight, poor fielding third baseman with a poor attitude. In any case, wouldn’t it make sense to give Scott Moore a more extensive look?)

Via Jake (in more ways than one?), the Boston Globe’s Alex Beam asks how the Kroc donation in November, 2003 has changed NPR. His answer is, not enough. But he finds a silver lining at Navy Pier:

So, if you pumped $225 million into the public radio system — the Kroc endowment spins off about $10 million a year — listenership would go up, right? Um, no. At a big NPR confab in Philadelphia last week, programmers learned that “the public radio audience is starting to decline after long, steady growth,” according to Lydon’s blog…What was once an insurgent radio movement now sounds like Chet Huntley reading the evening news. Call it NPR Classic. But NPR management won’t put the old warhorses like Cokie and Linda out to pasture for fear of alienating the loyal listeners who answer the bell during pledge drives.

The solution? NPR Remix. Chicago Public Radio is setting up an alternative public radio station, which NPR itself once was, to rope in younger, hipper listeners. “It’s going to be focused heavily on the region, with plenty of user-generated content,” a spokeswoman explains. Plus they have a sense of humor; check out their website, www.secretradioproject.com . It won’t be a secret for long.

The New York Times last weekend noted radio’s crisis:

While more than 9 out of 10 Americans still listen to traditional radio each week, they are listening less…Radio revenue growth has stagnated and the number of listeners is dropping. The amount of time people tune into radio over the course of a week has fallen by 14 percent over the last decade, according to Arbitron ratings.

Could the lack of localism on radio be a reason? It seems that AM sports is the practically the only programming that features local voices. Last year, on fall Sunday mornings, I had each radio in the house tuned to a different AM station for the Bears pre-game marathon: The Score in the bathroom, BBM in the living room, WGN in the kitchen and AM 1000in the bedroom.This year, I’ve settled on what may be the best Chicago duo in quite awhile: Chet Coppock and Steve McMichael on AM 1000 (I just can’t call it “ESPN Radio”). They spend almost as much time talking about the glory days of the 80s as they do the ‘06 team — but ain’t nothing wrong with that. They also demonstrate an anti-McCaskey bent that always plays well– but is strangely absent from WGN’s pre-grame, not so strangely missing from Bears flagship station WBBM. I’m still hopping around, catching the Three Bears on GN and Thayer on BBM during commercials, but I’m not even sure who is on 670 now, and I have yet to find Hub Arkush. Two weeks into an undefeated season, Coppock and McMichael– Chicago media stars for quite awhile now– are the tandem to beat.

That question was asked by CK in a comment on an earlier post on the Steve Dahl- -Garry Meier reunion. An earlier commentator, “Jason” had posted a comment, “Have you seen” followed by a link to something about what’s wrong in Chicago. CK was miffed that the link was, apparently, merely a promo for a new program on Chicago’s Q101.

“Jason” registered with an email address that appears to belong to someone named Tommy King. Turns out, the director of marketing for Q101 is named Tommy King. So, what do you say Q101 GM Marv Nyran and Emmis Communications CEO Jeff Smulyan and– is sock puppet comment spam your new marketing tool?

I needed a couple of days, but I finished off the podcasts of Friday’s (apparent) impromptu Steve Dahl-Garry Meier reunion. Conclusion: Dahl is a lot funnier with Garry than without. As I startled fellow bike commuters with my laughter, I was reminded by a comment that Roger Ebert once made; that Garry’s oddball interstitials are more likely to provoke audible guffaws than are Steve’s comments.

Despite youtube, podcasts, globs and all the rest, local media is still the best. Pending the unveiling of the Secret Radio Project, here are my favorite Chicago radio happenings for the year, in reverse order:

• Jonathan Brandmeier returns to Chicago’s airwaves on WLUP and a weekly podcast. As a bonus, he’s funny–  unlike his last stint in LA.
• El Pistolero is central to the organization of the March immigrant rights march, which sparks a national movement.
• Steve Dahl podcasts.
• WLUW continues to survive.
• After a 13-year separation, Garry Meier joined his former partner Steve Dahl. (The Sour Kraut briefly summarized the break-up.)

[If you did not listen to Chicago radio in the 80s, you can skip the rest of this post.]The Tribune carried Phil Rosenthal’s report above the fold (of the website at least).

There’s hope for peace in the Middle East yet. Apparently anything can happen.

One of Chicago media’s oldest, most bitter feuds came to a surprise halt Friday as estranged radio partners Steve Dahl and Garry Meier ended their acrimonious split of 13 years with an unplanned on-air reunion.

From the Sun Times:

Pigs flew, lightning struck twice and hell froze over Friday when former radio superduo Steve Dahl and Garry Meier teamed up on the air for the first time since their acrimonious 1993 breakup.

I don’t hold out much hope for this reunion being much more than a one-off. Steve seemed to be on the point on ripping Garry when it appeared he had left the area without coming onto the air. And he managed to bring Garry’s wife into the mix, which seems to be what prompted the radio duo’s 1993 break-up. From Dahl’s blog:

Garry is quite good at being the second person on a show. Sadly, he might have married someone who wants him to be the number one person…Think of Friday as breakup sex. You know, one last time so we can both move on.

And Dahl quoted in the Tribune: “He’s sort of been the one that’s been more standoffish than me…Who’s going to pay Garry? That’s the $12 million question.”
I just hope that they don’t wind-up like the 85 Bears reunion, with odd marketing schemes and strange public events. (The reunion can be downloaded from Dahl’s site, the show aired on 8/18.)

I have nothing to say on either of the two recent David Brooks columns on Markos Moulitsas and “the Liberal Inquisition” (what a show) that have received attention from many quarters. Rather, I’m interested in his recent meditations (behind the NYT wall) on the City of Broad Shoulders Culture Workers:

No American city has progressed as much in the past two decades as Chicago. It’s richer, cleaner, more livable, more honest though less colorful than it was.

OK, I’m with him so far (though perhaps there’s a case to be made for San Francisco on that count). Brooks continues:

The social conditions that underlay the urban realist reporting of the old days no longer exist…Chicago is no longer the city of broad shoulders but of cultural workers. The newspaper-devouring working class no longer exists. The old neighborhoods are not as cohesive (or insular). A Daley is still mayor, but the machine is gone.

There is no real working-class consciousness in popular culture today. The city is now shaped by the suburbs. Slats Grobnik has given way to legions of grown-up Ferris Buellers.

I realize that Brooks probably just parachuted in during Bush’s 18-hour Chicago visit last week and likely didn’t have actually visit any of the unnamed neighborhoods to which he refers. Furthermore, other than the Red Eye, or Hoy, I rarely see newspaper readers on the Redline north of Belmont. And, indeed, neighborhoods on the Near North Side sure tend to have more of a Ferris Bueller-feel than they did when Ferris ventured from the North Shore into the dark, scary city neigh-on 20 years ago.

Chicago is a city of contradictions: Studs Terkel refers to “the two sides of Chicago: the one side a Jane Adams, the other side a Capone…” Chicago’s second Daley era–America’s Best Mayor– is a major success by most accounts, crowned by the glory that is Millennium Park; while at the same time it is losing population and produced the two most-publicized post-Sept. 11 American wanna-be terrorists–Jose Padilla and Narseal Batiste.

But Brooks’ lament of the lack of reliable, aware and funny media voices is overwrought. There is no Mike Royko on the scene, alas, and its unfair to expect his role as the workingman’s advocate to ever be filled by one person today. But some folks and entities belie Brooks’ assertion that “there is no real working-class consciousness in popular culture” in Chicago media; some suggestions:

• Steve Rhodes and the Beachwood Reporter
  
• Alysia Tate and the Chicago Reporter
• At their best, Eric Zorn, Steve Dahl, and Chicago Public Radio’s Eight Forty-Eight
• WOJO FM’s El Pistolero, Rafael Pulido
• Chuck Mertz of This is Hell