Posted on 07/27/2020 6:38:02 AM PDT by Borges
After 23 years as the Chicago Tribune’s white male conservative standard-bearer, John Kass is about to lose his coveted spot on Page 2 and his status as the newspaper’s “lead columnist.”
Colin McMahon, editor-in-chief of the Tribune, today announced plans to reorganize the paper’s columnists and separate their work from the news section.
Within the next few days the changes will be unveiled in print and online to help readers differentiate between news and opinions, he said. One effect will be to relegate Kass and other columnists farther back in the print edition and label them more clearly as opinion writers.
“Those changes speak to our need and desire to be transparent with readers about what we do,” McMahon said. “And, I believe, they will help us maintain the credibility of our news coverage with our online audience, our print readers and our communities amid what is by all accounts a raw and hyper-partisan political environment.”
Besides, as insiders pointed out, the days of the “lead columnist” ended at most major newspapers years ago. Now it’s about a range of voices.
Kass, 64, a 37-year veteran of the Tribune, inherited the high-profile position after the death of Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mike Royko in 1997.
John Kass
The moves have been in the works since early March when McMahon replaced Bruce Dold as editor-in-chief of the Tribune. But they’re being implemented just days after the Chicago Tribune Guild called out Kass for a column in which he invoked an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory and drew the wrath of his co-workers.
Kass did not respond to requests for comment.
McMahon declined to address the union’s complaint against Kass, but said: “The Chicago Tribune, like other quality U.S. newspapers, has long prided itself on being home to a robust marketplace of ideas. Readers engage deeply with the Tribune’s editorials, columns, Op-Eds and letters to the editor, and the Tribune has long accepted that people taking issue with or even offense at the opinions expressed goes with the territory.
“That said, the Tribune, like a lot of news media, doesn’t do a very good job of explaining the difference between news coverage and opinion writing. That is something we’ve been working to address.
“We’ve gathered opinion writing in one place on chicagotribune.com, for example. We’ve added explanatory language to editorials by the Editorial Board. We’ve developed a standard for headlines to call out what are opinion columns. And we’ve got more changes coming shortly to our online presentation.”
IOW, our readers are too stupid to know the difference................
Nothing like limiting news to totally one side. I guess news rags want to totally eliminate any sense of impartiality.
There is a true need for an unbiased news network.
Review
I have a suspicion Mike Royko would get "sidelined" in today's media environment.
“”” to help readers differentiate between news and opinions,””
Funny stuff right there.
I miss Mike Royko.
B.S. Everyone who reads the Tribune knows who Kass is and what he does.
“I have a suspicion Mike Royko would get “sidelined” in today’s media environment.”
Royko was in fact “sidelined” in his own time.
IIRCC he made a comment about a rather queer minority group, that caused him some problems.
“IOW, our readers are too stupid to know the difference................”
LOL! No kidding. I think most people can understand the difference between opinion and news.
But who knows anymore? At the risk of sounding prideful, we’re a pretty smart bunch here at FR, but elsewhere, I don’t know.
They still have customers/readers?
Yes, I've seen this Orwellian game with George Soros elsewhere. The left has managed to convince people—using Goebbels's Big Lie (speaking of Nazi collaboration)—that anyone blaming Soros, the self-hating Jew who collaborated with actual Nazis against his own people, is really blaming Jews and therefore is engaging in anti-Semitism.
For a couple of decades, the US print media has replaced any real news with opeds thinly disguised as news, aka Fake News.
Newsweak and Slime, fake news mags were the first ones to get their subscriptions cancelled in our household because of their vile treatment of candidate and later President Reagan.
Next, we cancelled the SF Gay Rhonicle since we were not gay and didn’t hate America.
I cancelled Forbes and the WSJ for their bsopeds posing as news.
3 years ago we cut the cable to ABCNNBCBS and the so called sports nets.
We just let our subscription to Sling Blue expire due to the BLM bs during our national anthem. We can live without the SF Giants.
There is an excellent article on Free Ad Supported streaming options. If you don’t like the ads and material, you stop watching.
Besides saving a ton of money, we are not paying anyone to insult us, our president, our country or our religion.
In the words of Perry White, “Great Caesar’s Ghost”.
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