As one great Tribune journalist after another took the hedge fund’s buyout and walked out the door, I found myself facing a great decision . . .
My love for the Sun-Times goes back to the 1960s when I was a kid growing up in Evanston. I read its sports pages before I went to school.
Just how wrong was not apparent to me until much later—in the early 1980s—when I started covering politics in Chicago. I spent hours going through old clippings in the Municipal Reference Library in City Hall—to study up on all the things that happened in the years before I was alive or paying attention.
More tax breaks for the rich. Less social programs for the poor. Stop coddling criminals. Break unions. Especially the teachers union. Make it harder to sue corporations. Send Republicans to Congress and Springfield, and keep the Daleys in City Hall.
But I must concede Mayor Lightfoot has a point when she says the papers—at least, the Tribune—never made a big deal about the shitty attitudes and bully tactics of Chicago’s white mayors. They helped perpetuate the myth that it takes a mean-tempered Boss to keep Chicago from turning into Detroit. It’s a myth we struggle with to this day.
That new owner is looking to take advantage of my loyalties.
