SPORTS MEDIA CANNOT BE SAVED, AS CHICAGO AND A NATIVE SON GO AWAY
The soft, dismal coverage of sites is blamed on media firms that don’t care about journalism, the worst in Chicago, home of retiring Bryant Gumbel, who says only “a fool" would work in today's muck
Why would anyone live in Tribune Tower? It’s a name from the past, stripped of Chicago relevance unlike other 20th-century brands, such as Lemonheads candy. The building hasn’t been a publishing house for years but assumes history’s gaze as a residential structure, with condos sending desperate newspaper folks to work inside a printing plant until next summer.
“The building’s rich architectural elements,” states the vision, “are reflected in masterfully articulated new expressions, creating a seamless connection between yesterday and today.”
July is when the hedge-fund company that controls the Tribune, Alden Global Capital, leaves the property and lets Bally’s build a casino complex pushing $2 billion. What happens to the journalists when they’re booted elsewhere? We still don’t know. If there continues to be a reason to print a paper, Alden purchased the 20-year-old presses of the Paddock Printing Center, which also would publish any remaining papers of the suburban Daily Herald and Chicago Sun-Times.
Twenty Lake Holdings, the facility is now called.
You can sink a lot of jobs in that pool of liquid.
I found it fascinating that Tribune workers used Tribune Tower as a picketing site last weekend, ignoring real-estate owners who wanted to use the swimming pool and gaze out windows at the views. Alden cares only about profits, they say, and doesn’t care about news gathering. Senior reporter Laura Rodriguez Presa told the media that 179 unionized journalists still are working without a contract. Does this sound like a killer strike waiting to happen? It comes after fewer Sun-Times employees, dealing with non-profit management run by a public radio firm, talked seriously about a strike. Any newspaper people who scram in that city will return to no jobs.
Stripped down to dimly read websites that should have been started 20 years ago, the Chicago operations are the death of American media. Once the hallmark of the business — some of us at the Sun-Times, aiming for Tribune blood — they aren’t worth reading now. Occasionally, after an especially weak day, I’ll ship a note to the Tribune and Sun-Times executive editors. They don’t seem to understand that sports sections, which once sold their operations, are lifeless in a community of 8.9 million that sometimes only cares about sports. When I was there, Chicago was the epicenter of where a columnist wanted to live. Now you want to be anywhere else, evidenced by the low numbers reading and listening to radio shows.
“One of the main reasons we wanted to unionize was to make sure that our newsroom wouldn’t be gutted — to make sure that it wouldn’t be the story,” Presa said. “Our salaries are staying the same. There are no raises. It almost feels like there’s no safety in our job.”
There is no shelter. It’s daily hell. “Alden Global Capital is only coincidentally in the news publishing industry — they bought it because it’s cash flow they can use. It is an absolute coincidence that they are in the business of informing the public,” said business editor Dave Mulcahey. “Who stands up for informing the public? It turns out it’s … the reporting and editing staff of these newspapers, to the extent that they survive.”
The possibility exists that none of those outlets will be around in scant time. Same goes for The Athletic, which still loses substantial amounts when it started in 2016. The problem is that the complete media run has gone soft and dismal, including Chicago, a town with America’s worst sports owners of this era. The writers are afraid to write the nauseous truth — one at The Athletic called me a “tabloid” columnist, when I deal in truth and he spins words that mean nothing — because they don’t want to anger billionaires who own teams. They are cowards, using paltry words. They don’t care about you and the people who use paywalls to buy the Tribune and The Athletic. They are trying to hold jobs because, oh, it’s just sports, though sports demands the sightlines of countless readers and billions from gamblers. The comments from readers are louder and more resonant than the stories.
As you may know, I saw the misery years ago and handed back seven figures of my contract to the Sun-Times. I love life now more than ever, away from bosses who keep superiors happy with non-talk, including those on ESPN’s “Around The Horn,” reduced Monday to a backup ESPN2 spot by the Famous Toastery Bowl. I will live a lot longer because I pulled out of print media when I did, referring to my editors as corrupt with plenty of evidence to write in a book. What I do on this site is write what I want and when I want, without being controlled by those people. My stuff here is better than it ever was. Thank you to Substack.
And one show where I explained my stance was HBO’s “Real Sports,” where Bryant Gumbel gave me a chance to describe what happened to a paper he read while growing up in Chicago. Tuesday night, his program airs for the final time. At 75, he knows where the industry is headed after fighting journalistic odds for 29 years. He says he’s “sad” but notes “everything has to end at some point and this is the right time for this to end.”
He signs off appropriately. As the Associated Press writer points out, “Increasingly, sports news comes from outlets owned by leagues, like the NFL or MLB networks, or networks whose businesses depend greatly on winning rights deals,” Gumbel answers: “The show tried to do some things in sports journalism that no one else was doing. I think it was one of the few avenues that could honestly explore issues without having to worry about ratings or sponsorships or relationships.
“I’ve been on the other side of that coin. I've worked for networks who were what they would call now the ‘broadcast partner’ of a sports entity. And you'd only be a fool to think you can follow any story wherever it wants if it collides with that relationship. Life doesn't work that way.”
I stopped being a fool because I worked for too many. I can’t speak for my health, but through swimming and biking and writing five or six times a week without hassles from con men, I think I’ll live and publish much longer.
God should love the people on the picket lines. Merry Christmas. But sorry, the angels aren’t coming to save you at Tribune Tower.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.