UPDATE: The message board’s working again! Let the bile spew.
The CHICAGO TRIBUNE and CHICAGO SUN-TIMES have been taking out their anger over their ownership kerfuffles on each other recently, especially in their sports departments (where it doesn’t look quite as petty, perhaps).
First, a Tribune intern wins a Sun-Times video contest disparaging Tribune Company and Cubs owner Sam Zell and his attacks on Wrigley. (After all, who knows the old coot best than the ones that hate him most?)
The ante has been upped, at least temporarily, by the new turn of events at the Sun-Times. The paper’s Web site now accepts comments from readers, opening a social networking-new media-Web 2.0 thingies that someone at the Sun-Times decided was essential to new paradigms blah blah. Except, of course, Jay Mariotti wasn’t having any of that. No comments on his columns, thanks.
For a brief time Friday afternoon and evening, though, the Chicago Tribune came up with a solution for disenfranchised Mariotti commenters: their own message board on the Chicago Tribune’s Web site. However, that board is gone as of this morning, leaving a “Server Error” behind. Proof of the board’s brief existence can only be found at Google.
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Leave it to a CHICAGO TRIBUNE intern to “punk” the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES who was running an anti-Sam Zell video contest, reports newspaper insider publication EDITOR AND PUBLISHER. Katie Hamilton landed the $1,000 first-place prize and promptly gave it to Tribune charities. We’re guessing the always-tight Trib failed to give Katie a bonus for her efforts. A full-time job would probably suffice.
Ms. Hamilton’s video was created around Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” classic. Watch it here. Sam Zell has been enemy #1 in Chicago ever since he mentioned the possible sale of naming rights to Wrigley Field. It’s like America selling one of its national parks to China.
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Sam Zell, caretaker owner of the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field as part of his December purchase of the Tribune Company, wants everyone to know that “his role is to throw bombs and shake people up. He’s a man of his word.” For Cubs fans, that word has been “monetize”. (At least, that’s the clean version. Zell prefers naughtier words.)
He’s rolled as many grenades under the new furniture as possible, including layoffs on the Tribune side and throwing ideas out randomly to wring every last nickel out of the Cubs franchise before selling it off. However, his notion to sell naming rights to Wrigley Field isn’t remotely the worst of it; now he’s trying to destroy Chicago architecture. No, really. All of it.
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