Posted on 07/10/2007 6:34:15 PM PDT by LdSentinal
CHICAGO The Chicago Sun-Times is turning left.
The tabloid that shifted toward political conservatism under the brief ownership of Rupert Murdoch more than two decades ago now says that it is "rethinking our stance on several issues, including the most pressing issue facing Americans today: Bush's war in Iraq."
Under marching orders from Publisher John Cruickshank and Editor in Chief Michael Cooke, new Editorial Page Editor Cheryl L. Reed introduced a new Commentary section Tuesday with a promise to turn the tabloid back into the liberal-leaning paper it was for decades before the Reagan administration.
"We are returning to our liberal, working-class roots, a position that pits us squarely opposite the Chicago Tribune -- that Republican, George Bush-touting paper over on moneyed Michigan Avenue," Reed wrote. "We're rethinking our stance on several issues, including the most pressing issue facing Americans today: Bush's war in Iraq."
Reed, who did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment about the change, is the paper's former book editor who was asked by Cruickshank and Cooke to, she wrote, "conceive an editorial and opinion section that looked like the future."
Her instructions: "'Don't be conservative,' Cruickshank urged me. 'We don't want you to hold back.'"
Reed said the Sun-Times will be adding seats to the editorial board "so that board members -- the paper's brain trust -- reflect the ethnic and social diversity of our city."
Eventually, she added, the paper will list the board members -- and disclose who wrote what editorial. "That way you'll know who the characters are behind the curtain," she explained. "No Wizards of Oz here."
Without being specific, Reed said the paper would be changing its mix of columnists. In recent years, the regular non-staff columnists on the opinion pages have included the conservatives George Will and Mark Steyn, who is an outspoken fan of Conrad Black, the former Hollinger International Chairman many at the paper blame for the Sun-Times' perilous financial state. It also regularly runs liberal commentators, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Father Andrew Greeley.
One new columnist introduced Tuesday was the paper's previous editorial page editor, Stephen Huntley. Huntley identified himself as a conservative, though with "a more liberal or libertarian stance" on social issues such as abortion, gay rights, and embryonic stem cell research. His column will appear three times a week.
The Sun-Times was a liberal paper through the 1960s and 1970s, and turned right when it was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in 1984. "You may wake up one day, and the Chicago Tribune will be the liberal paper in town," then-Publisher Robert E. Page told a news conference around that time. Though Murdoch soon sold the tabloid to an investment group fronted by Page, the conservative bent remained in the editorial pages.
The editorial-page swing coincides with a new branding strategy that includes the slogan "Let's get into it." The editorial page, and the paper's Web site, is opening up more space for reader contributions, Reed said.
"We'll be sticking our necks out on issues," she wrote. "You won't be scratching your heads trying to figure out where we stand."
The Trib always seemed more liberal in day-to-day stuff; hell, the Times even had Bill Buckley when he did a column years ago.
Why don’t they go all the way and Call themselves “The Chicago Workers of the World Daily (brought to Chicago by the CPUSA)?”
Only idiots would cut Mark Steyn. The guy is just a fun read regardless of whether you agree with him or not.
It’s laughable that the Sun-Times considers itself conservative. They must be aiming to capture the moonbat market with change.
I mean, search as much as I want, I cannot seem to find one.
So this conversion fills that gaping hole in the American journalistic landscape.
Every business should cancel its advertising commitment. Let’s see the liberals live without conservative $$$.
They can’t.
It won’t be long before massive layoffs due to lack of circulation (ad $$$).
But the ‘working class” isn’t liberal anymore.
This isn’t World War II, we’ve no victory gardens, we’re making no real sacrifices. They’re still searching grannies at the gates of the airport terminal, in case those prescription arch supports might hide a bomb.
What people do care about is if they’ve got a job, how much they’re getting paid, how the future looks to them, and how little of this will change over the next half year. But that’s ok, you’re ready to lie to them, to tell them that illegal aliens take nothing from them.
All you’ve decided to change at the paper is to make an agenda, to silence all counter to it, and to not hide it in the paragraphs, but put it on display. You’ve proudly declared that you will not be newsmen, you’ll be content providers on the road of evangelicalism, without all that religion stuff, unless it’s something anti-Christian. You formally declared that the newsman’s creed of an impartial relayer of facts means nothing to you, that you’ll tell people what they should think, and they’ll think liberal, by god, or else.
I hope the public strikes a backlash that forces the paper to fold, not because you’re trying something different, not because you’re liberal and I’m conservative, but because you believe people are so stupid that they’re unable to form their own ‘proper’ opinions, and you’re going to spoon feed them your dogma until they ‘understand.’
Guess what, customers don’t like being called stupid for long. Ask Air America about their ratings, they’ll let you know.
The Chicago Tribune is a “Republican, George Bush-touting paper”? I must have missed that.
Did you email this to the paper? It’s terrific.
This is really a loser move. But it does show the thinking of why papers are going down the drain.
Good. They’ll be gone soon.
I expect to see a lot of whining from the Trib about “talk radio” and the need to bring back the “fairness” doctrine. LOL! What a bunch of buffoons.
Dumb move. The Sun-Times will now have to compete with every other news outlet for the attention of the fraction of the populace that is liberal. That, I believe, is what killed Air America. Who needs another liberal radio station, when nearly all the existing ones are liberal?
“Liberal working class”? WTF is that? Liberals are, for the most part, rich elitists who got rich throug inheritance, litigation, or corruption, and people who are poor because the are too lazy and/or stupid to get a job. Most conservatives- rich, poor, or middle class- have jobs.
Another one bites the dust.
“But the ‘working class” isn’t liberal anymore.”
Perhaps they mean the liberal intellectual types who pretend to be “working-class”, like Michael Moore.
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