The Sun-Times became the propaganda wing of Chicago's progressive movement
"The Sun-Times, I think, is an attitude," columnist Neil Steinberg is heard saying about journalism in the 30-second fundraising video that non-subscribers are compelled to endure so they can read an article on the Chicago Sun-Times’ website.
Steinberg is an appropriate representative for the Sun-Times. An irritable and haughty liberal with a checkered personal life, it's understandable that the video — which at first was only 15 seconds long — is unlikely to be an effective fundraising tool.
Only two people speak in the video. Steinberg, who is 64, and the recently retired Mary Mitchell, who is further to the left of Steinberg, is 70.
Hey Sun-Times, have you thought of including a younger writer in your video appeal to attract youthful donors to your failing newspaper?
Last month, the newspaper's David Roeder revealed that the Sun-Times and WBEZ-FM, Chicago's NPR station — both of which are operated by Chicago Public Media, a non-profit — are seeking voluntary buyouts that result in the departure of 20 to 30 employees, including some who work in the Sun-Times newsroom. The departures could end up saving CPM $3 million to $5 million annually.
In a January installment of the Fran Spielman Show podcast, Spielman, also a Sun-Times columnist said:
"That's a lot of people. Implied but not stated is the fact that if we don't hit that benchmark, layoffs could follow."
Later in the same episode, Spielman described the printed edition of her paper as the "thin pamphlet that it is today."
What comes after layoffs? Possibly shutting down. The Chicago Reader, a holdover from the hippie free newspaper era, in an urgent fundraising message that announced layoffs, said that it faces an "imminent risk of closure."
At one time, the Sun-Times owned the Reader. In 2018 they held a fire sale and unloaded it for $1.
The "thin pamphlet" that is the contemporary Sun-Times is, like the Reader, an intellectual monoculture. Every Sun-Times columnist is a progressive or a leftist, except for the nationally syndicated S.E. Cupp, who calls herself a conservative. At best a RINO, Cupp is a "Never Trumper" who has refused to vote for a Republican presidential nominee since 2012, when Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama.
All newspapers in the internet era have faced challenges as many advertisers, particularly department stores, automobile dealerships, and grocers, have abandoned them. Classified ads, once a lucrative cash cow for newspapers, have been superseded by Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.
The Sun-Times, however, has failed to adapt.
Online, there are countless alternative news sources, many of them local, including Wirepoints, crime blog CWB Chicago, and of course Chicago Contrarian, that offer a center-right viewpoint.
Meanwhile the Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Block Club Chicago are chasing that 15 percent or so of the local population, the hyper-political, purple-haired women and their husbands who wear p-hats, the ones who are all too eager to announce their preferred pronouns.
While that is indeed a market, it is not a mass market, even in Chicago. While the city leans to the left, a majority of residents are not that progressive.
Add the growing Chicago diaspora into the mix — many of them remain deeply interested in their old hometown — that market, as a percentage, is even smaller.
Wake up, Sun-Times: Readers who live far from Chicago click on internet advertisements too. And so do conservatives.
Growing up in a home where both the Tribune and Sun-Times were delivered, I eagerly devoured each of them daily. While the Tribune leaned slightly right and the Sun-Times, with the exception when it was briefly owned by Rupert Murdoch, leaned left, the reporting on current events was not overly political, and both papers offered columnists with liberal and conservative opinions.
Readers were given varying perspectives and were able to make up their own minds. Imagine that.
There is crossover of staff from the WBEZ newsroom over to the Sun-Times newsroom. One reporter, Dan Mihalopoulos, has spent two years trying to turn the miniscule number of Chicago Police officers who are allegedly members of the Oath Keepers into a blockbuster story. An organization that some people call a right-wing extremist group, at last count, Mihalopoulos' count that is, there are allegedly nine Oath Keepers within the CPD ranks, down from a high of 27 cops.
There are roughly 10,000 officers serving Chicago.
Of the alleged nine officers, none have been accused of committing any crimes connected to the Oath Keepers. Although — wait for it — Mihalopoulos, with his frequent co-writer, Tom Schuba, reported last month that an officer who was present at a 2020 George Floyd protest was photographed wearing a face mask with the logo of a similar group, the Three Percenters. The officer received a reprimand — but no other punishment. That scolding occurred, Mihalopoulos and Schuba said, “after years of investigation.”
We are certain the duo envisions itself as the 21st century's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Yet almost no one cares about news stories like their so-called Oath Keepers scoop.
If the call letters of Chicago's PBS affiliate, WTTW, really do stand for Winnetka Talking to Wilmette, then the Sun-Times represents Lincoln Square, which in Andre Vasquez has a socialist alderman, talking to Hyde Park, parts of which are represented by Jeanette Taylor, another socialist alderman.
While it is possible some residents of Lincoln Square and Hyde Park are fuming over those nine officers with alleged ties to the Oath Keepers. However, what about the other eight million people living in the Chicago area?
In another instance that shows how out-of-touch the Sun-Times is, the self-anointed "Hardest-Working Paper in America" quickly joined in on the media pile-on of a fictional report that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a Chicago public elementary school in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. Only it was the U.S. Secret Service (USSS), not ICE, who attempted to enter the school. The USSS agents were seeking a student who allegedly made a threat against President Donald Trump.
The Sun-Times, along with most of the local media, slow-walked reporting on the details of the horrific torture and murder of a Norwood Park man that happened two days after the non-existent raid, most likely because the suspects in that killing are two illegal immigrants, one from Ecuador and the other from Venezuela.
There are narratives to advance, but others to suppress.
Are there important news stories that the Sun-Times learns about — but it chooses not to report? Probably.
The Sun-Times treats its readers like children. Its journalists will tell us what to know and when to know it. If they do at all. And they'll give us only the details on stories that they choose to share.
If the Sun-Times aims to succeed, one path to that goal is to honestly report on Chicago’s crime epidemic.
The paper once known as "The Bright One" is reminiscent of an ornery restaurant owner who makes menu choices — bad ones — simply because he wants to only cook the food he enjoys. And if his diners do not like the menu offerings, then of course it is the customers' fault because they are too stupid to know better.
It is an attitude.
Restaurants like that always fail.
