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This Issue from John Kuczaj:
• "Steve Neal Needs to Get Off the Crystal Meth!!!"
• 80-20 Stupidity
• Random Musings
"Steve Neal Needs to get off the Crystal Meth!!!"
That was my thought after reading his horrendous assessment of 38th Ward Alderman Tom Allen in the Feb 24th Sun-Times.
It's still my opinion--he's nutso.
First, some background: I lived in the 38th Ward most of my life. I grew up listening to my parents occasionally grousing about our Alderman, Tom Cullerton. Cullerton died in 1993 and Mayor Daley appointed Tom Allen to take his place. Allen's one of those old political foot soldiers who rose through the ranks, did everything asked of him by the bosses and got tossed an occasional bone. By 1993, my parents had moved out of the city and I had even moved away, but I returned in 1997 and lived in the Ward until 2000.
At first, it was obvious to me that Allen wasn't much of a leader. He definitely gives off an air of a follower, which led me to believe he was just another one of Richie's puppets. Then I started talking to some of the 38th Ward political opposition and found that Daley wasn't the puppetmaster as much as the 38th Ward Democratic committeeman was. That means the person pulling the strings now is...PJ Cullerton, daughter of the previous Alderman. Huh. Go figure.
Okay, so now to what I perceive as Steve Neal's dementia.
The first paragraph tipped me off: "He puts his constituents first. That's why Ald. Thomas R. Allen (38th) has just stopped the Home Depot retail chain from building a huge store near Harlem Avenue and Irving Park Road." What's amazing about this statement is how misleading it is in regards to the Home Depot. Neal could have even checked his revisionist-history facts with Hollinger's Pioneer Press, though they didn't cover the story as well as the other neighborhood weekly--the Lerner Times.
Sticking in the Hollinger family, check out "Developers eye state land" from the July 27, 2002 Pioneer Press in which Tom Allen most definitely is supporting the Home Depot.
"The plan brings closure to a big question mark on the outskirts of the city," Allen said. "There have been many rumors over the years on what the state is going to do."
"The property is off the tax rolls right now," Allen said. "It is a parcel that is underutilized and unattended by the state."
Let's fast forward to this past January 30th where you can see that Allen is now very much against the Home Depot. It's no coincidence that area residents went nuts about the plan and the election was approaching. Make no mistake, Allen flip-flopped on the issue. As this story developed through the Lerner Times, Allen was even digging in at one point against the opposition--even throwing up his hands and saying that the deal was done and there was nothing he could do about it, but he obviously underestimated his own constituents, which isn't really a sign of an "Alderman who cares."
Neal further states, "Allen...has done more to improve the quality of life in his Ward than any other Alderman on the Northwest Side," which is interesting because my old neighborhood is most definitely barely fighting off decay. Neal mentions Allen spearheading the fight against illegal conversions, yet doesn't provide any statistics on how many landlords he's cracked down on over the years. Passing a law is one thing, making sure it's enforced in your own Ward appears to be another. I know of two, maybe three definite illegal conversions (or possibly several families living in one house with 5 cars, 12 people) on my Grandmother's block and nothing's been done in the past 10 years or so.
Oh, sure, a disgruntled landlord haphazardly tried to put a hit on him and Allen had charges dropped, so I suppose he put THAT constituent first. But it appears that the best reason to vote for Allen was that his opponent was a doofus cop who was caught spying on a 33rd Ward challenger of Dick Mell.
Neal's whole piece was thin and just inaccurate enough to paint Allen as more competent than some believe he is. Allen's not a horrible Alderman, but then again, neither is a concrete block. He's nothing special.
So, on that Monday while Neal's fiction on the train, I was quite dumbfounded. On the one hand, I'm thinking that Neal is positioned high on the commentary page, so he should have all the facts down. On the other hand, he's writing commentary, where truth varies by perception. He's obviously not bound by the paper's stance since he wrote some pieces supporting the paper's endorsed candidates while going against them in supporting Jack Lydon over Gene Schulter in the 47th. Actually, you can read more about that in Michael Miner's Feb 28th Hot Type, and while you're at it, check out Steve Rhodes' March 6th Press Box as well for more on the election.
In conclusion: Steve Neal wrote a glowing commentary about something I know a little about, and now I can't trust anything Neal presents as a fact. I also have to wonder if he lives in the city at all, because if not, that explains a lot. Clueless.
80-20 Stupidity
Last ish I mentioned an amusing panel discussion of Red Streak vs. RedEye. I forgot to mention the most perplexing statistic to come out of it. That is, that the Chicago Tribune captures 80% of newspaper advertising dollars in Chicago, while the Sun-Times only commands 20%. This figure was brought up by Michael Cooke and not disputed by the RedEye guys. Considering the existence of the Daily Herald, Southtown, etc. I am guessing that the percentages are wrong on the whole, but correct when totaling ad revenue to both papers. So the Trib pulls in four times the ad revenue that the Sun-Times does. Wow.
I'm seriously at a loss as to how this continues. If the Sun-Times has a younger, hipper, city-dwelling readership then why is it not cleaning up in ad revenue? In the current age of "targeted marketing," a media outlet has several research sources that can tell them and advertisers just who their audience is. In the case of the Sun-Times vs. the Tribune, the story forever has been that the Tribune has a more affluent, higher-class readership. That is to say, research has shown that Trib readers have much higher incomes and purchase more expensive houses & cars on average than Sun-Times readers. I'm not sure if the gap has closed at all, but I remember hearing that years ago and I suspect it's still the case. So, the younger, hipper, urban readership the Sun-Times has is nice, but they also generally have less money. Thus, high-end advertisers would shun the Sun-Times and flood the Tribune.
Seems to make sense, right?
Well, here's a little prediction: target marketing is a flawed concept in regards to long-term growth and it's hurting the economy.
Wow. Big thought, but stick with me.
High-end stores & high-end cars companies target their advertising (usually to a 35-64 year old, "affluent" audience) ignoring a younger, impressionable audience that is generally skeptical of the "establishment". The high-end advertisers figure that eventually that younger audience will move into their targeted sights and they'll accept their advertising message. So when I hit 35, it was expected that I would see advertising for--let's say Oldsmobile--and all of a sudden I would have a desire to join the rest of the 35-64 year olds because, after all, "it's not my father's Oldsmobile." This thinking was flawed because for 20 years prior, I had been targeted with advertising that said Oldsmobiles were for old folks, not for a young, hip urbanite such as myself. I mean, really, is anyone REALLY surprised that GM had to shutter Oldsmobile? How about Chrysler with Plymouth? Ford with Mercury? What about high-end retailers who are having a damn hard time attracting new customers? How retarded is it that you don't see all the high-end retailers trying to court the young, future-affluent audience? Marshall Fields? To me, it's a Frango store and no more. Nordstroms? To me it's the store whose prices are twice reality. I go there for the pampering and then I shop Target, thank you! I don't think it was a coincidence that Marshall Fields & Carson Pirie Scott started to have financial problems right around the time half their targeted consumers died off. Give Wal-Mart & Target credit for building discount department stores into a huge force, but also give the high-end retailers props for abandoning their future customers.
Maybe I'm in a minority of free-thinkers and intelligent shoppers, but I think I have a valid point here. Targeted advertising is hurting a ton of businesses in the long-run-from Retailers to auto makers to newspapers to television networks. That 80-20 split just makes me laugh...especially when I think of all those ads I'm avoiding when I read my Sun-Times every morning.
Random Musings
The San Francisco Examiner is going to die , and I think it's sort of a bummer. Aside from the fact that I like their name, I liked the underdog story of them vs. the Chronicle. Kinda like the Sun-Times vs. the Tribune, except that in the Examiner's case, their owners have no clue what they are doing while Hollandaise, Inc. has done well.
Just as in coverage of Daniel Pearl, journalists are once again playing by different rules when it comes to covering a story in which a journalist is a central figure. This time, it's a tragedy where we saw the horror o tape-the Rhode Island nightclub fire. The owners of the nightclub are brothers, and one of them is a Providence reporter with a reputation for being aggressive when confronting his subjects. Of course, when he's the subject, then things are different. Now he's exposed as a massive hypocrite. Check out the criticism at pointer.org .
If you missed Jim DeRogatis' superb column in the Sun-Times about live music in the aftermath of the E2 & Rhode Island tragedies, check it out, print it out and learn from it:
The Sun-Times has converted most of its Red Streak vending boxes from Free to 25 cents. Since they do not have anyone passing out free papers at my EL stop as the RedEye does (thank you, "Spanish-speaking-guy-I-jokingly-refer-to-as-Pedro"), this means that I will no longer be reading The Red Streak during my commute. I plan on filling that free time by reading two or three overhead ads.
Proving you can't keep a good unfounded rumor down, the New York Post gossip column had an interesting blind item yesterday: "What Midwestern newspaper columnist / Movie reviewer recently admitted that he'd rather cuddle with his best friend, Norman than deal with any kind of pu**y, which he described as having a certain smell-all bad?" I didn't need to call Sandy Koufax to know that the Post was referring to Richard Roeper and his column from last Tuesday's Sun-Times which is supposedly about dogs and cats. Yet, the intelligent reader knows different. Since everyone knows that all dogs are boys and all cats are girls, his little literary device seems to have backfired on him. Am I right, Richard?
Okay, I made up the blind item, but I think the Rope-man was a bit hard on the felines.
Steve Dahl celebrated 25 years on the radio a couple weeks ago, though to be fair; doesn't it really come out to only 17 years on the radio when you factor in about 8 years worth of dead air? Just kidding, Dahlfans!
In the Chicago Red Face (on newsstands, no!) we have an ongoing parody of an opinion poll by a condescending newspaper catering to the young & clueless. Nothing we've ever done is as hilariously clueless as the RedEye reader panel.
Seriously, we have to start teaching Political Science in our schools, seriously.
Oh, and if you're interested, pick up the current issue of the Reader (March 7th) before next Wednesday and you can read an interesting article on page 8 about my web site empire that began with davekingman.com and according to my business model will probably end with total world domination.
My friend Gregg says I just may be the Charles Foster Kane of the unprofitable Chicago web industry.
All I have to say is: "Rosebud...dot...com..."
IN THE CURRENT CHICAGO RED FACE:
- Chicago Celebrates Pulaski Day, Snubs Crawford Again
- Human Shields Leave Iraq; Transfer to Winnipeg
- North Korea insanity monitored
- Car seat instructions hard to understand
- RICHARD DOEPER: Waiting for Roger to die
- Could Garfunkel be Da Bears' bridge over troubled NFL waters?
- Todd Dudeman's TV Talk
- JAY MERRYMAN: Jay's Malebag
- Mike Farrell...he's NOT dead!
- Cool Again: Lion-O
Check it out at: www.chicagoredface.com.
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