WBEZ should be expanding local on-air talk programming, not cutting it back
WBEZ should be expanding local on-air talk programming, not cutting it back
& Juwan Howard to DePaul? Yes, please
2-29-2024 (issue No. 130)
This week:
News and Views — On changes at WBEZ, the pratfall for Invest in Kids and more
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go
Do better — An exhortation to the click-baity Tribune social media team
Mary Schmich — A memorial tribute to former “Brenda Starr” illustrator Ramona Fradon
Political leaders don’t really want the public’s guidance on many issues. It is, in fact, a form of voter suppression
Re:Tweets — The winning visual tweet and this week’s contest finalists
Good Sports — Caitlinmania, plus some thoughts about basketball coaches including Juwan Howard
Tune of the Week — “Hope Lingers On” by Low Lily
Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.
Last week’s winning tweet
All movies about teenagers have to be set in the ‘90s or earlier, otherwise we’d just be watching kids on their phones for two hours. — @CooperLawrence
Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-tweets poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.
Who are you and what do you want?
I’ve created a very basic, six-question, anonymized survey to find out more about who reads this newsletter and why. Here is the link. I’ll report on the results a week from today.
News & Views
News: “Chicago's NPR station WBEZ-FM is cutting down its locally produced, daily on-air talk programming to one hour.”
View: I feel as though the statement from the station about the change — the main element being reducing the local flagship program “Reset” with host Sasha-Ann Simons from two hours every weekday to one — is management urinating on our legs while telling us it’s raining, to use the old cliche:
The move from two hours (11 a.m.-1 p.m.) to one hour (noon-1 p.m.) will allow the production staff to introduce new features, including more listener engagement, more timely and relevant news coverage and regular segments on Chicago history, health and wellness, arts and culture, the environment and more.
The statement heralds a shift to digital:
The programming change will help Reset put more resources toward meeting new and existing audiences where they read, listen and watch. Going forward, “Reset” interviews posted online will feature more in-depth write-ups and Q-and-As alongside the audio. The show will deliver compelling daily video content on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Producers will continue to take the daily podcast and daily newsletter in new, more user-friendly directions. And for the first time ever, “Reset” will have a regular presence on Instagram.
Interestingly, public station WAMU-FM in Washington D.C. has just announced a shift away from digital publishing “to focus on its core radio product.”
WAMU GM Erika Pulley-Hayes told Axios. "We're making the choice to invest in what we're better at than anyone else in this town, and that's audio."
"We feel like this is the best way for us to engage and build loyalty," WAMU Chief Content Officer Michael Tribble added.
Peter Cherukuri, Vice Chair of WAMU's Board of Advisers, remarked, "Too many media companies fail by trying to be all things to all people, leaving their value proposition diluted and weakened."
This town needs more local news talk and analysis on the radio, not less, and Chicago Public Media (the Sun-Times-WBEZ collaboration) has the deep, talented staff to generate it. The syndicated midday shows — “The BBC Newshour,” “1A,” “Here & Now” and “Fresh Air” online — are good, but the station needs more Chicago in Chicago Public Radio.
News: “Public school students outperformed tax credit scholarship recipients at private schools, report says.”
View: I’m surprised by this result, which ought to spell the end of efforts to revive the discontinued program that diverts tax money to parochial schools through the sleight-of-hand of tax credits.
Faith-based schools comprise the vast majority of schools that received Invest in Kids funds. … Researchers found that faith is “a critical organizing element in school culture, curricula, and interpersonal relationships,” according to the study. In some schools, researchers said teachers see prayer as a way to connect with students and address disruptive behavior, while principals stressed the need for parents to align with their school’s mission and values, according to the study, which notes that one school encourages families to sign statements of faith.
News: Republicans blocked a U.S. Senate bill to protect access to IVF.
View: Catering to fringe extremists is right on brand for Republicans these days, so this headline — “Biden campaign torches Trump after GOP blocks IVF bill” — was no surprise. I wasn’t even surprised that a bill filed in the Alabama state legislature to protect IVF service providers in the state expires in April 2025, safely after this fall’s elections.
News: Buried in Gov. JB Pritzker’s budget proposal is a proposed limit the amount of the sales-tax collection fee merchants are allowed to keep.
View: High time. As I reported five years ago, allowing retailers to keep 1.75% of sales tax receipts for the trouble of collecting and remitting them is a costly relic of the pre-computer era when they needed big ledger books and smart people wearing green eyeshades to get right with the taxman, and each new transaction added to the chore.
At nearly every business now, software not only keeps track of every transaction, but it also remits taxes electronically to the state. And while there’s a cost for purchasing, programming and regularly updating such technology — which also tracks inventory and other details — advocates for limiting the reimbursement point out that each new sale doesn’t impose extra new compliance costs, making the flat percentage model a windfall for big-box and high-volume sellers such as Walmart and Home Depot.
Seventeen of the 45 states that charge sales taxes don’t reimburse merchants for collecting them, according to a 2019 Federation of Tax Administrators survey.
The FTA tables showed that among our neighboring states, Iowa pays no reimbursement, Wisconsin and Kentucky cap their reimbursements and Indiana pays .73 percent, less than half of Illinois’ 1.75 percent rate. Only Missouri’s uncapped 2 percent rate is higher.
Team Pritzker estimates the change would result in about $100 million in new revenue for the state.
News: “People Who Play By the Rules,” an Illinois Political Action Committee, will have to pay $25,500 in civil fines for breaking the rules on filing timely reports of expenditures.
View: What makes this ironic punishment particularly rich is that People Who Play By The Rules is helmed by the sanctimonious, insufferable right-wing radio host and perennial political loser Dan Proft, a Floridian. See more Proft below.
Land of Linkin’
“My serious question for opponents of abortion rights who are now racing to champion in-vitro fertilization” in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus. Now that you seem to agree that life doesn’t begin at conception, let’s talk about what really animates your passion to control women’s reproductive choices, shall we?
Justin Kaufmann in Axios: “Downtown Chicago malls in danger of dying off.”
A must-read from Politico: “Beyond shock and awe: Inside Trump’s potential second-term agenda.” The subhead reads, “From nationwide abortion bans to classroom culture wars, assaults on climate science and political weaponization of the military, his return to the White House could make Trump 1.0 seem tame.” Who’s deranged now?
The New York Times reports that the British Board of Film Classification has revised the rating of the 1964 movie “Mary Poppins” to PG because of “two uses of an offensive racial slur to describe an indigenous group in South Africa.” But the newspaper is so delicate that it won’t tell you that the word is “hottentot.”
“Excerpts from the argument against the ‘Bring Chicago Home’ referendum with which the judge evidently agreed,” in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus.The moral fight over progressive taxation in property transfer levies is not relevant to the legal issues having to do with the referendum.
The Orlando Sentinel’s newsroom union: “The Orlando Sentinel unionized in 2020 with roughly 59 reporters. Today we have 32. Here is why they left: “
Must-read from the Tribune’s Alice Yin: “Mayor Brandon Johnson promised a new era of ‘co-governance’ in City Hall. So far, it’s a bumpy ride.”
Squaring up the news
This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:
■ Gizmodo explains why you don’t need to use airplane mode on airplanes—but you should, because you’ll be violating (outdated) federal law if you don’t.
■ Reader columnist Ben Joravsky rips into coverage of Brandon Johnson’s administration: “The only thing the mainstream media (or at least the owners) want Mayor Johnson to succeed at is failure.”
■ Donald Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, says her uncle’s hand-picked House speaker “received illegal money from at least one Russian oligarch. There could be more.”
■ An anthropologist who attended last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference to “understand Trump’s base” concludes that “they believe, more than ever, he is a savior.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke takes stock of the “absolute mess” that is the Republican Party.
■ Law and Chaos columnist Liz Dye: “Trump prosecutors are learning to hunt in packs. Clever lawyers!”
■ Harvard journalism prof Steve Almond on “The Daily Show” revival: “Jon Stewart’s ‘calm-down’ paternalism isn’t funny in 2024.”
■ Columnist Parker Molloy rips apart a New York Times headline about student loan forgiveness: “An exercise in the paper’s absurdity.”
■ If you wanna know how Vice went bankrupt after being valued at $5.7 billion in 2017, The Hollywood Reporter says to “look no further than its brash (and still highly paid) founder.”
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Do better
Nearly every day on social media, the Tribune sends out a link to the “Today in History” feature, a tolerably diverting use of space that can jog the memory. But the promo itself almost never reveals the year. See this from Tuesday:
If the point is to inform, then the year — 1973 — should be included. Otherwise, it feels more like the mention of a random event from the past.
If the point is to get you to click through, then it’s just an annoying clickbaity link along the lines of the “You’ll never believe what your favorite child actor looks like now” drivel that pollutes even reputable publications.
Do better, Chicago Tribune social media team.
And I’ll add a “do better” to every journalist everywhere who mentions people’s birthdays without giving their ages. Publicizing people’s birthdays without mentioning their ages isn’t journalism; it’s flackery. Particularly egregious are those columnists like the Sun-Times’ Michael Sneed who generally lists the ages but then withholds the ages of her friends.
Mary Schmich: A tribute to Ramona Fradon
My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a recent offering:
Ramona Fradon died Saturday at the age of 97.
You may not recognize her name but there's a good chance that if you're of a certain age, you ran across her art. She was a pioneer in comics, in a time when women were rarely admitted to that elite club.
I met her in 1985 when I was recruited to write the old Brenda Starr comic strip, which Ramona was drawing at the time.
Brenda — as we called her — was created by Dale Messick, who both wrote and drew it for decades. But in the 1980s, Ramona took over the drawing. Eventually another writer was brought in, too, but she didn't last long.
And then my turn came. I wrote Brenda for 25 years, always while juggling a newspaper job; looking back I'm sure that my newspaper-deadline approach to writing a comic strip script drove Ramona crazy.
I'd write a week or two at a time then fax or FedEx the script to her from wherever I was. (This was pre-internet). I scrawled, on a yellow legal pad, several weeks of script while sitting on the floor of the Charlotte, N.C., courthouse, on breaks in the Jim Bakker trial. Once on assignment for the Tribune, I drove around rural Mississippi desperately in search of a fax; when I didn't find one, I called Ramona and she patiently took dictation.
I honestly don't know how she put up with me, but she did. And she cranked the clever art out week after week, year after year, until she left the comic strip biz in 1995. The great comics artist June Brigman replaced her, and it was June who wrote yesterday to tell me Ramona was gone, and to say how much Ramona meant to her.
It's tempting when you work with people to take their talents for granted. Or to take for granted that you get to work with someone who's so freaking good.
Ramona was one of the greats, and a few years ago I wrote her to make sure she knew that I knew. She was also very kind to me, in addition to tolerant.
Here is her obituary.
As for the strips I've posted above, they're just what I randomly laid my hands on when I opened one of the drawers where I haphazardly stash the old strips.
Yes, Tribune, yes it was
A Tribune editorial on Friday's court ruling that stands to invalidate the Bring Chicago Home referendum said:
Was it voter suppression when a campaign to stop the plan to put Chicago’s “sanctuary city” status before voters succeeded? Of course not. (Mayor Brandon) Johnson cheered that campaign because he didn’t want that symbolic question on the ballot. He was not trying to end democracy or disenfranchise voters. Those who opposed putting the sanctuary status on the ballot were taking advantage of a process, and in that case, they won. Good for them. Now Johnson should acknowledge the rights of the other side in the Bring Chicago Home case.
The overall point of the editorial, which was that the angry bleatings of those who opposed Friday’s ruling against the referendum question did nothing to advance the legal argument in favor of the referendum question, was valid. But the truth is that, in general, our pols don’t want to hear what the voting public thinks, and if moving not to allow voters to be heard on the “sanctuary city” status isn’t suppressing the effort by voters to be heard, I don’t know what is.
Yes, opponents of the “sanctuary city” referendum used a wholly legal process to keep that advisory question off the ballot. I understood why they did it: The issue is fraught, polarizing and easily misunderstood. It stood to dominate the political debate prior to the primary next month and make Chicago appear to be an anti-immigrant city.
And, similarly, opponents of the Bring Chicago Home referendum are using a wholly legal process — going to court with an argument rooted in Illinois law — to prevent the voters from giving the City Council the necessary OK to enact a new system for levying real estate transfer taxes.
Putting a metaphorical sock in the figurative mouths of voters is most certainly suppression. Good for them? Nah.
Minced Words
Jon Hansen, Cate Plys and I joined host John Williams for this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We spent a lot of time on the issue of in vitro fertilization, a process Hansen and his husband are in the middle of, and the Bring Chicago Home referendum. On the subject of uniformed police officers in courtroom viewing galleries, I changed Hansen’s mind live on tape. We also spoke about Caitlin Clark and shared our thoughts on the Oscar-contending movie “Oppenheimer.” Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.
Quotables
If God does not make mistakes (as many religious people claim), why did he wind up drowning all but a handful of his creations because he hated the way they turned out. — Betty Bowers
The term "medical debt" shouldn't exist. A sign of the broken system of the past, it's become one of the leading causes of bankruptcy. — JB Pritzker
He is by far the most disgraceful figure in modern presidential history... You have to be in the throes of some sort of toxic delusion in a toxic cult, to believe that Donald Trump has ever been in any sense, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, or ethically fit to be president of the United States. — Bob Costas
In 1965, the US Supreme Court first recognized the constitutional right to contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut, but only for married couples. It wasn’t until Eisenstadt v. Baird, seven years later, that the Supreme Court made clear that unmarried people have the same right to contraception. — The National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association
Look at what happened to the Republican party. … No longer is there any talk about fiscal responsibility. … You got Donald Trump who put us on $8 trillion in debt more than any other president. … Donald Trump is basically saying he’s going to tell Putin to go invade our allies. — Nikki Haley
When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year old boy that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team. “My hero!” It is really creepy. … The creepiness was palpable. I’ve been with Trump and Putin, and Trump is in awe of Putin. — Malcolm Turnbull, former Prime Minister of Australia.
The cartel charade is over. The NCAA needs to allow athletes full economic rights, without restriction. Sign athletes to contracts, and bargain at arms length. The rest of our society does it, and it works very well. — Jay Bilas
If you openly say you'll gladly suffer 4 more years of Trump to send a message to the Dems about (fill in the blank) and to signal opposition to the 2 party system, you're an idiot, and probably aren't the kind of person who'll suffer most. There are no exceptions to this rule. — Tim Wise
(There were) hundreds of Americans persecuted for peacefully assembling around the Capitol to petition their government on January 6, 2021. — Radio host Dan Proft
The only thing more shrill than your hackneyed columns full of sentimental bilge and Leftist boilerplate is your amateur folk music, as I understand it from your former colleagues. — Dan Proft, to me, after I noted the above and referred to him as a “flaming hack.”
Re: Tweets
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:
The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:
No one is actually sorry to have missed your call. — @simoncholland
Have you noticed that the lyrics to “I’m a Little Teapot” confuse teapots with tea kettles? — @IAmJackBoot
He wrote: “Your adorable.” I responded, “No, you’re adorable.” Now he thinks I like him, when all I did was point out his grammatical error. — Unknown
My parenting style is best summed up as “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to tell you.” — @bgschnikelfritz
You guys, I don't think Major Tom is coming back. — @whoinvitedjon
Customer: “I’d like to lodge a complaint.” Me: “Well. OK, let’s see if we can lodge it sideways up your ass.” And I never worked retail again. — @neenertothe3
I texted my husband on my way home, “Can you start cooking those sausages?” Then added <3 as a cute little heart. He cooked two sausages. — @AzureDoo
"Please retain for your records." Bold of them to assume that I, a person who still has to dig boxes out of the trashcan because I forgot to read the recipe, have "records." — @emilykmay
This guy literally made me stop my car so he could mansplain the "speed limit" to me. Then he had the audacity to ask me for money??? — @jennasaysquoi
Is it gaslit or gaslighted? I want this wedding toast to be just right. — @BobTheSuit
Vote here and check the current results in the poll. And a second reminder to fill out the Picayune Sentinel Reader Survey if you haven’t already.
Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media.
For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.
Good Sports
All things Caitlin Clark
Here are the results of a poll I posted last Thursday about women’s collegiate basketball superstar Caitlin Clark of the University of Iowa:
I’m surprised that roughly 1 out every 3 readers believes that Clark could make an NBA roster. Because there is simply no way she could.
She’s an amazing talent, no doubt: A deadeye shooter and clever passer who plays with panache. But she’s just 6 feet tall and weighs a spindly 150 pounds, and though there have been shorter, lighter players in NBA history — Spud Webb, 5’6″, 133 pounds and Muggsy Bogues. 5’3″, 140 pounds are the best known — they’ve made up for their lack of stature with explosive quickness that Clark does not exhibit.
No disrespect to her game or to her fan appeal. She’s great to watch and stands to be a transformative figure for the WNBA.
Tickets for Iowa’s last game of the regular season — Sunday’s home matchup between her No. 6 Hawkeyes and the No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes — were going on Wednesday for as much as $6,244, according to StubHub. The cheapest seats were reselling for more than $375. Odds are good that the Ohio State game and Iowa’s games in the Big Ten tournament and then the NCAA tournament will set TV viewing records for women’s college hoops.
Speaking of records, eyes will be on Clark Sunday to see if she can score 18 points and break the NCAA Division I scoring record for men — 3,667 points, a mark set 54 years ago by Pete Maravich of Louisiana State University. On Feb. 15, Clark passed the NCAA women's all-time points record of 3,527 points set in 2017 by Kelsey Plum of the University of Washington. Wednesday night, she scored another 33 points to bring her career total to 3,650, surpassing University of Kansas star Lynette Woodard, who scored 3,649 points in a career that ended in 1981, prior to the NCAA’s recognition of woman’s sports.
Woodard played in 139 games over three seasons, and before the establishment of the 3-point shot. Clark has played in 129 games.
About that men’s record:
Maravich played in just 83 games during his three-year college career— freshmen were not eligible to play varsity basketball in those days — which also came before the 3-point shot was instituted in 1987. His average of 44 points per game far surpasses Clark’s average of 28. points per game.
But Maravich took an average of 38 shots per game with a .438 success rate, whereas Clark averages just 20 shots a game with a slightly better .465 career average success rate.
If Clark passed the ball less and took nearly twice as many as she does now, she probably would have passed Maravich’s mark a year ago, particularly with the 3-point shot at her disposal.
If she stays another year at Iowa — using her fifth-year COVID eligibility as I argued Tuesday that she should — she’ll set a scoring mark that would likely never be approached by a four-year player in either men’s or women’s college hoops.
I wonder if former coaches secretly root against the teams that fire them
DePaul University fired head men’s basketball coach Tony Stubblefield last month when the team began the year by going 3-15. The team has now lost all 10 games under interim coach Matt Brady and, after Wednesday’s blowout loss to Xavier, stands at 3-25.
The Milwaukee Bucks fired their coach Adrian Griffin last month after the Bucks started the season 30-13, thinking a new head coach, Doc Rivers, would do even better by the talent-laden franchi mi8se. After that, the team went 8-8 and now stands at 38-21.
I doubt coaches in Stubblefield’s and Griffin’s positions would ever admit to it publicly, but my guess is that, despite the affection they may have for their former players, they’re secretly feeling more than a little vindicated. by the failure of their replacements to improve on their records.
Speaking of coaches, failure and DePaul …
The Sun-Times ran a long piece the other day speculating about whom DePaul will hire to be its next full-time men’s coach. Not mentioned was Michigan’s Juwan Howard. His team has been dreadful this year. And yes, it has been unusually beset by injuries, illness and academic problems. But last year, he had two first-round NBA picks on the team — Kobe Bufkin and Jett Howard (his son), as well as a second-team All-American center (Hunter Dickinson, who transferred to Kansas) — and Michigan didn’t even make the NCAA postseason tournament.
Howard, a former NBA star, is a Chicago guy who starred for Chicago Vocational Career Academy. He was a great coach at the start for Michigan — won honors as Big Ten Conference Coach of the Year, Sporting News Coach of the Year and Associated Press College Basketball Coach of the Year in 2020-21, his second season — but seems to need a fresh start. He might be just the guy to restore the long-flagging DePaul program to the greatness it ought to enjoy.
And, speaking as a fan and an alum, Michigan needs a fresh start as well.
How to discourage college basketball fans from storming the court after victories
Punish the home team.
That’s the only way to keep exuberant fans from rushing onto the floor after a big victory.
A namby-pamby Tribune op-ed on court storming. by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign computer science professor Sheldon H. Jacobson, suggests:
To mitigate risk, the coach and players could make public announcements about responsible celebration for several days before the game. If the administration, instead of issuing directives or threatening penalties, were to have the coach and the players call for restraint, students would be more likely to respond positively.
No. Advance finger-wagging and tsk-tsking about responsible behavior will never work. Fans should be warned that their team will be assessed one technical foul at the beginning of the next game for every 15 seconds or fraction thereof that more than 10 fans are on the playing surface after the end of the game before the visiting team is safely off the floor. And police should make a few random arrests of violators and hit them with misdemeanor charges to further discourage the practice.
Tune of the Week
If earnest and folkie is your jam, as it often is mine, you’ll enjoy “Hope Lingers On,” an uplifting song from 2018 by Lissa Schneckenburger performed here in magnificent harmony by Low Lily (here Flynn Cohen, Liz Simmons and Schneckenburger).
Both Schneckenburger and the Low Lily folks are Vermont-based, but this song has become a popular choral piece throughout North America. The Boston Children’s Chorus has a terrific video. See also:
…avnd many more. The song — sometimes called “Hope Lingers Here” — was brought to my attention by my friend Jo Mortland, a Chicago Barn Dance Company caller who plans to teach and help lead it during the break at Monday night’s dance at the Irish American Heritage Center.
I will not hate, and I will not fear In our darkest hour, hope lingers here
Honestly, I’m a bit conflicted about anti-hate sentiments. What exactly is the proper emotional response to those willing to overthrow democracy and impose their theocratic values on the rest of us? To those whose racism and selfishness is thinly disguised with claims of patriotism and “anti-woke” ideology? Those who don’t feel both hate and fear in the face of the imminent threats such people pose are more high-minded — or something — than I. Hope, though? Oh yes.
Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!
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This week's tweets...all funny !(to me)
I haven't listened to anything on WBEZ since Click n Clack went into reruns.
I find their live talk boring, tendentious & utterly unnecessary.
But then I've totally tuned out all of talk radio, WGN, WCPT.
I just don't need talking heads anymore.