WHAT HAPPENED AT THE POST SHOULD HAPPEN IN CHICAGO: FIRE CHRIS DE LUCA
Without management answers — did the Sun-Times cover the Chicago Sky via a Wintrust subsidy? — the newspaper should examine its organization and dismiss the sports editor in charge of covering teams
An integrity crisis doomed Robert Winnett at the Washington Post, where reporting standards rebuffed an editor who used a phone hacker to help locate stories. Day after day this week, the Chicago Sun-Times won’t respond to questions prompted by a rival reporter at the Chicago Tribune, who said the Chicago Sky sports beat was “subsidized” and “previously supported through a sponsorship by Wintrust, which is one of the main Sky partners.”
What’s next, letting a team mascot write the stories? Or the owners?
I have asked executive editor Jennifer Kho, who won’t respond to emails I’ve sent about the sports department — including deputy managing editor Chris De Luca. At the Tribune, Bulls/Sky reporter Julia Poe asked me to “retract” her comments, which she’d willingly made about her competitor in a town where both newspapers are fading away. Did Poe not think I’d be interested in her quotes about a corrupt subsidy I didn’t know existed? Actually, I’m wondering if anything else at the Sun-Times has been pawned off.
Here’s what I’d like to know: When will the bosses turn De Luca into Robert Winnett?
As I’ve written, a media outlet has no reason to exist when it cedes control via a subsidy. When I left the Sun-Times after 17 years, I was concerned the newspaper was improperly close to Jerry Reinsdorf, chairman of the White Sox and Bulls. Why would an editor detach independence and assign reporting reins to a separate company? To save money? Why not allow the Cubs to be covered by Gallagher Insurance, an advertiser at Wrigley Field? Why not have the Bears covered by United Airlines? Let them determine what is run and seen by readers, not the Sun-Times writers and editors, which would be an all-time farce in an industry of cads.
Poe’s comments should have been addressed publicly by Kho and De Luca. If she was wrong, say so. If she was right, say so. But to sit in the background and say nothing? As a non-profit organization since 2022, the Sun-Times is overseen by five directors on a board, including Matt Moog, who was supposed to depart his position last year but remained when 14 employees were laid off in April. The Sun-Times has allowed daily circulation to dip toward 30,000 when the number approached 350,000 when I left. The paper’s website is free. The Tribune purchased the printing press of the suburban Daily Herald when Bally’s casino took over the publishing center, meaning the Sun-Times is alive only because Tribune Publishing prints what remains of it.
The Sun-Times sports department once ruled Chicago. Under De Luca, it has slipped into a tiny squat in an underserved market of nine million nutty fans. He is a political bootlicker, once saying stupid things about me years after I left the Sun-Times, when I appeared on a San Francisco TV station upon taking a job in that city. When I was in Chicago as a columnist, he was a baseball writer. I never worked under him, thank god. The paper has good beat writers, but its influence and pomp left years ago. No one buys the content. How does it stay in business?
Hopefully not with subsidies. People in charge need to speak up — is Poe wrong or right? — and she should be applauded for her words and remain in good standing on her beats. Anyone who knows me knows this story isn’t going away. Don’t Chicago readers deserve answers from a paper that should be demanding answers from franchises?
I could have fun and ask who is more deserving of an ouster — De Luca or White Sox manager Pedro Grifol. But nothing is amusing here.
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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.