Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I’m back from Byzantine Europe — Istanbul, Athens — as dangerously clearheaded about home as an American can get only on the road. Now I see plainly what’s wrong with the press in Chicago, and the root of the problem is the little boxes the product’s vended in, especially the elegant “street furniture” that holds sway downtown. Newspapers don’t belong in showcases: State Street isn’t Tiffany’s and the Tribune and Sun-Times and Herald and Reader aren’t Rolex watches and diamond rings. The street kiosks of Europe, where vendors squint out of huts festooned with daily, weekly, and monthly titles, their headlines screaming in a dozen languages, retail the press as something raw and vital, which is what it’s supposed to be. JCDecaux embalms the papers of Chicago and lays them out in a row of caskets.
