Back when the daily papers of our great cities went at it tusk on tusk as the trees shook and the earth bounced, the squabbles of the mites in the grassroots were scarcely worth anyone’s notice. But the world’s changed, and the mastodons aren’t nearly so frisky. Ron Roenigk, publisher of the Inside-Booster, has never had a pot to piss in; Patrick Boylan describes his wellesparkbulldog.com as an “effort of love” requiring him and his wife to take freelance assignments to get by. Yet in their neck of the woods—the north side’s North Center-Lincoln Square corridor—they’re the go-to guys for hyperlocal news, the new fashion.
At 70, Butler might have retired. “Why should I?” he says. “I love being a reporter. I still have all my marbles, and then some.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Last month, writing an Inside-Booster story on Gene Schulter’s decision not to run for reelection as the 47th Ward alderman, Butler possibly screwed up. At any rate, he triggered a firestorm.
Butler was the author of the article in question, and his editor was lecturing him as if he were a freshman who’d just joined the high school paper. “In any event,” Borgardt went on, “plagiarism is defined ‘the wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or purloining and publication, of another author’s language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and the representation of them as one’s own original work,’ according to Wikipedia.”
“So you’re the victim. Nice to see that clarified,” Boylan posted in response. “So I’m a pussy. What’s it called when you defend yourself by attacking another person’s spouse Roenigk?”
Without naming Rickard, Roenigk pledged that she’d “never again get another assignment in our pages and if you should see her byline in other news outlets I hope you will consider the source.”
But Reichel says, “I know Pat and I talked to him in previous elections but in this election cycle I did not talk to him. That’s something I would have remembered.”
