Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It can be a heartwarming sight when the next generation steps up — depending on what you thought of the first generation. Word comes that a string of nine small newspapers in Rhode Island is being sold to a company headed by Melanie Radler. Her father, David Radler, started out with his own little papers in Canada and wound up publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and COO of Hollinger International, where prosecutors say he and his longtime (until recently) pal Conrad Black pocketed money hand over fist. In March Black goes on trial on corruption charges in federal court in Chicago. Radler has pleaded guilty and turned state’s evidence.
McBride and Melanie Radler couldn’t be reached to talk about their new adventure. A Rhode Island journalist tells me the outgoing owners, the Journal Register Company, “bled these newspapers down to a fraction of what they used to be.” If Melanie Radler has inherited any of her dad’s genius — or if dad’s lurking in the background of this deal — she’ll show them. David Radler never saw a turnip that wasn’t a little plumper than it needed to be.
