In 1948, Marshall Field III merged his Sun, the paper he’d launched seven years earlier with FDR’s blessing to oppose the isolationist Tribune, and the Times, Chicago’s first tabloid, which he’d bought the year before. Field was a Democrat, and his new paper backed Harry Truman for president. But in 1950 Field turned the paper over to his more conservative son, Marshall IV, and the Sun-Times wouldn’t endorse another Democrat for president until Lyndon Johnson in 1964. And after LBJ, no Democrat until Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Publisher John Cruickshank and editor in chief Michael Cooke came to Chicago during the Black-David Radler era, but they aren’t ideologues. Mainly, they want to keep the paper alive. They liked the job Reed did with the books section in the year she ran it, giving it new energy at a time when books sections are dying out. (The Tribune has saved a few bucks by shifting its own to the low-circulation Saturday paper.) A few months ago, Reed says, they told her they wanted to do with the editorial pages what Ebert had told Black to do, with her in charge of the transformation. She gave them her terms: “I want to blow up the section.” And they said fine.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
With a capital D? I asked.
Progressive but nonpartisan?
Jim Thompson Vindicated? Hardly.
Thompson said on the radio that the jury had found Black and the others guilty on counts “where it was clear the noncompete transactions were hidden from the audit committee,” and acquitted them on “some other counts based on transactions that went to the audit committee but with a false explanation.” In other words, where Black and Radler hid their scheming in plain sight in documents Thompson “skimmed,” they got off. Vindication?
