Eason always takes my calls, which I interpret as a sign that whatever happens, we’ll always have Julius Meinl. For the same reason, I don’t like making those calls. In a perfect world—no, in a marginally less imperfect world—I would commiserate with everyone I know at Creative Loafing who’s feeling beaten down by events and not write about the company at all. Certainly I can’t begin to feign disinterest in what happens to it—the auction will have an enormous impact on the future of the Reader, which I’ve been connected to in one way or another since the first issue in 1971, and of everyone who works around me in this little shop. The closest I can come to disinterest is agnosticism. I simply do not know whether in the long run—assuming a long run—the Reader would be better off in the hands of the people trying to keep the company afloat by cutting our editorial budget or in the hands of a New York-based private equity firm. My reporting won’t betray partisanship because I’m too perplexed to be a partisan.
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I have no explanation that will satisfactorily answer this question. The fancy one I’ll retreat to is one word long: epistemology. You see, it’s not simply what journalists know that matters to us but also how we happen to know it. I knew what happened at WBEZ because I got a tip and worked the story; I knew about the Reader because it’s home.
He went on, “We cannot claim to be disinterested. These are our jobs, our 401k plans, our futures on the line. For now, however, it’s the biggest business story in town. If we can’t handle that obligation as professionals, we might as well be sold to Ernie Banks.”
After the meeting, he’ll hear—it’ll be the talk of the newsroom—about what went on. But he can’t use that either. “You have to be able to source it,” he says, and intramural chatter isn’t a source. “It can be the foundation for other reporting . . . the basis for questions to others. But you can’t just use it. It becomes like any other off-the-record or deep background information. It’s information you have but it’s not information you can use in and of itself.
