Among America’s major newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times enjoys an unusual reputation for not reporting news. For instance, President Bush’s decision to transfer national intelligence director John Negroponte to the number-two job at the State Department was the top story in the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times on January 4. The Sun-Times ignored it.
Editor in chief Michael Cooke told me it was “regrettable” and “awful” that those ads weren’t better labeled. “But the fact they weren’t was not part of a plot,” he said. Some readers think there was a plot, one that involved the Sun-Times laying off a big local story–Macy’s.
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But Moran was far from totally wrong. At various turns the Sun-Times pulled its punches when covering Macy’s–or never punched at all.
Sun-Times business editor Dan Miller topped his list with the Macy’s story, which in his telling was all about Federated’s “strategy to infuse new life into its recently acquired Marshall Field & Co. by spiffing up its infrastructure, reorganizing its merchandise and changing its name.” Miller said Federated CEO Terry Lundgren “is determined not only to rejuvenate Field’s (as Macy’s) to its former splendor, but to demonstrate that the department store concept itself will play a central role in America’s retail business.” Macy’s own PR department couldn’t have given the transition a cheerier spin.
Cooke told me he gave no one instructions not to print critical letters. “Any suggestion that there’s a mixture of church and state is nonsense,” he said hotly. “If they’re making the suggestion we shut up and voluntarily or otherwise gagged ourselves for the advertising, that’s simply wrong. [Publisher John] Cruickshank would not accept that for a second. He would never pass [such instructions] on to me.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Robert Murphy.
