What personal details should journalists use? Which should they ignore?

& advice to Democrats on how to respond to Trump's deployment of the National Guard

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Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.

The shooter was transgender. So what?

Many news outlets noted that the 23-year-old behind the mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis Wednesday was a transgender female. At the same time, I saw and heard numerous stories, such as this one from the Associated Press, in which journalists strove to avoid using pronouns in referring to the shooter, as though striving not to legitimize her transition.

Attorney Joanie Wimmer, a frequent contributor to the PS message boards who frequently cites her trans identity, posted this:

Most media outlets reported that the shooter was transgender. I have never seen a news report of a mass shooting where the report stated that the shooter was non-transgender and/or heterosexual. Why do they report the gender identity of a notorious criminal only when they are transgender?

The answer is that we live in an utterly transphobic culture where hatred of transgender people has become socially acceptable. Donald Trump spent over $200 million mocking and demonizing transgender people. Why do companies spend that kind of advertising money? Because it works. The United States government, under Trump’s administration, has issued official United States government documents stating that we are dishonest, mentally ill, and dangerous.

Reader Mark K. responded:

It’s an instinctual reaction to rationalize a shocking event by "othering" the perpetrator. Blaming the event on some uncommon attribute of the person allows us to blame them directly without confronting the fact that something about our society allows these events to occur with disturbing, insane frequency, unrelated to the shooters' individual attributes.

I agree with Mark. All of us look quickly for the answer to the maddening “why?” question, but, as a matter of journalistic ethics, reporters need to be very careful about citing details and characteristics about people that may well be irrelevant and reflect poorly on groups of people.

The addition of any detail about a person in a news story generally ought to meet the relevance test. Is their age relevant? Is their race? Their ethnicity, religion, citizenship status or country of origin? How about if a person is adopted or divorced or obese? The key question is “so what?” and the answer will vary depending on circumstances.

Here, the answer may turn out to be that the woman who killed two and injured 21 in a barrage of bullets felt ostracized or unsupported by the church due to being transgender, and that fed into her decision to attack there.

News reports say that her manifesto said “I’m tired of being trans” and “I regret being trans,” but the connection between that and her evident self-loathing is far from clear.

Until and unless we have good evidence suggesting a cause-and-effect connection, the gender detail is irrelevant and inflammatory.

Notes and comments from readers — lightly edited — along with my responses. I got a lot of pushback on my dismissal of the value of window seats on the airplane; see “Unpopular opinions?” below for that.

The National Guard in Chicago?

JPC — I’m a progressive who does not like what Trump is doing with the military in our cities. But the mayor of Chicago would be smart to welcome the troops if they are really coming here to help police the city’s worst neighborhoods. Putting Humvees in front of the Art Institute or in Lincoln Park makes no sense. Trump should send the troops to the most crime-ridden neighborhoods. Have them help clear the most dangerous buildings. Set up outside the open air drug markets. Back up the police on raids of drug dens. Then help clean up and fix those neighborhoods. It will only be temporary, for sure. But, for a short time, welcome the help to tackle the worst areas. Make it a reset, so the good folks in those areas feel like they have a chance and can make a difference. Heck, maybe a few kids see the good the troops can do and decide to join the Army and not a gang. What does the city have to lose?

Skeptic —Is there really any uncertainty about whether Trump cares about crime or simply wants an extremely wasteful performative show? Not in my mind.

Zorn — I worry that the Democrats are falling into a Trump trap by predicting that a National Guard occupation will make crime worse and break down trust between police and the community. Properly deployed, the Guard is likely to prompt a temporary drop in crime and is unlikely to do any long-term damage to relations between residents and the Chicago Police Dept.

That is, of course, not the point. An expensive surge of uniformed military personnel will almost certainly not cause any long-term reduction in crime and will use resources that could go into sustainable crime reduction programs. If I were advising Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker, I’d tell them not to catastrophize but instead to keep the focus on the need to fund long-term public safety measures. The “Thanks, but …” strategy rather than the “How dare you! This is a disaster!” strategy.

Advice for Democrats

Jake H. — President Bill Clinton's rather dramatic turn to the center in the 1990s brought the Democrats back from the wilderness. His Democratic Party said abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." It said yes to both a "path to citizenship" for undocumented immigrants and a "secure border." It said yes to both gun regulation and more police. It said yes to welfare limits and health care reform (though the latter had to await Obama and his razor-thin supermajorities to, even then, just barely make it across the finish line). He forcefully distanced himself from the crazy on his own side, giving us the first "Sister Souljah moment." All of these positions had the virtue of seeming like just so much common sense to solid majorities, rendering the other fella the crazy one or out-of-touch one. I'm not saying that these exact positions and this exact rhetoric translate perfectly to the current moment. The lesson is that his general approach was a winning one, and we'd do well to draw from it.

Culture worriers

Tom T. — To your list of culture-war battles that Trump is bringing back to excite his base, you should add his effort to browbeat the NFL's Washington Commanders into changing their name back to the Redskins.

Zorn — Oh, dang, of course! I forgot that issue, which is pure distillation of his cynical tactics. I’ve added a post-script to the original post. Thanks.

Tips for students

Lynne Allen Taylor — I read your 2019 column, “School hacks: The very best advice for students making a big leap this fall” (gift link) and with the tips you offered the twins when they entered high school in 2011. I read your college tips with a slight chuckle. They seem aspirational. Did you follow all the tips when you went to college? I'm pretty sure my twins' eyes would have rolled so hard I could hear them, if I gave that speech.

Zorn — Well, of course not! That was hard-won, acquired wisdom gained through trial and a lot of error. Another way to read those columns is advice I wish I’d gotten — and followed — when I was entering high school and college. If my kids read those columns — they were not in the habit — and rolled their eyes, they did it out of my presence.

Juss-tice denied

I received surprisingly few comments on my harsh review of the new Netflix documentary “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?” The most vigorous criticism came on BlueSky from a California litigator, whose thread of comments I’ll digest here:

ES — The documentary changed my mind. I heard police making subjective assessments — They thought it was suspicious that he didn’t drop his sandwich after the attack. They didn’t like how he handled the noose he said was put around his neck. That’s not physical evidence against him, and there are no forensics implicating Smollett.

Who in the police department was leaking to the press right away that Smollett’s statements appeared to be BS? What happened to that missing 10 seconds of video from the hotel surveillance cameras?

Was the nature of the plea deal made with the Osundairo brothers fully disclosed at trial? The fact that one of them has a serious felony conviction and that a cache of weapons was discovered where he was living created a motive for that brother to falsify evidence to secure a deal.

The brothers lived and worked in the area, no? Clearly they were in the area. Attacks against gay men were on the rise weren’t they? Hate crimes were on the rise, weren’t they? So why the immediate disregard of Smollett’s story? Police could have fed the brothers all the details so their statements aligned with Jussie’s initial reports. How many details were disclosed to the brothers?

Zorn — The conspiracy theory that this credulous barrister has bought into says that there were two white bigots roaming Streeterville at 2 a.m. during the polar vortex with bleach and a noose in their pockets thinking they’d find someone to beat up and hurl racist, homophobic remarks at — at the same time that Abel and Ola Osundairo, co-workers of Smollett on the “Empire” set who later testified that Smollett had hired them to stage a hate crime against him, also happened to be wandering those same streets.

We know the brothers were there because police tracked them down using surveillance footage and ride-share receipts — they did not come forward with their story; their story came out only after they were arrested and their dwelling searched.

Were they inspired to tell their story by an offer not to prosecute one of them on the gun charges? Quite possibly. That doesn’t mean their story is false. And it doesn’t explain the $3,500 check Smollett wrote to the brothers or the retail surveillance footage that shows them buying supplies for the attack.

And it didn’t take an inside source from the Chicago Police Dept. to sow skepticism about Smollett’s story. It was very weird — unprecedented, really. Sure, hate crimes against Black and/or gay people are not uncommon, but the trappings — the noose, the bleach, the “This is MAGA country!” declarations along with the time of day and the weather — made Smollet’s story so over the top that most objective observers quickly began to doubt it.

The NCAA spanks Michigan (with a pool noodle)

Bob E. — Does anyone else find it odd that EZ has not yet commented about the punishment leveled by the NCAA on his alma mater Michigan’s football program? Is it not important enough? Less important than following the dismal Colorado Rockies? Less important than the NewsWheel? Not worth commenting on?

Zorn — I haven’t commented yet because I find the whole thing to be much ado about not very much. A low-level staffer with Michigan’s football program dispatched people to public venues — football games at other schools — to video record the games. Nothing wrong with that, as hundreds if not thousands of fans point their phone cameras at the field. His purpose was to get images of the sideline coaches of future opponents sending signals and signs to the players on the field, and then to decode those signals to gain a competitive advantage in upcoming games, which is wrong according to NCAA rules.

I don’t agree with that rule. Tens of thousands of people can easily see those signals, so they’re hardly private. And if sign “stealing” is really a problem, teams can and should alter them from game to game.

The NCAA levied fines that could end up being around $30 million and several minor restrictions on recruiting. The governing body also imposed a three-game suspension on head coach Sherrone Moore — who was then the offensive line coach — for obstructing the investigation by deleting 52 text messages he exchanged with the sign-stealing staffer. Not exactly the death penalty for the program.

No postseason ban. No vacating of victories. No reduction in athletic scholarships. No rescinding of the 2023 national championship. Fitting.

Here’s Sports Illustrated:

One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding sign-stealing in college football is the belief that it's something only Michigan was doing. In reality, sign-stealing is not only a widespread and long-standing part of the game—it's also completely legal. Decoding signals from game film, exchanging intel with coaches from other teams, and even interpreting signals in real-time during a game are all standard practices across the sport.

Understanding that baseline is crucial to dispelling the growing myth that sign-stealing is some kind of sinister scheme unique to Michigan… Sign-stealing is common. And it's legal. … (And while) collecting signals from televised footage or in-game observation is fair game, recording them in person is a violation.

I’ve stopped tracking the regress of the 2025 Colorado Rockies as they are now all but certain to end up with a better record than the 2024 Chicago White Sox. For quite a time they were playing behind the pace of the Sox, who set the record last year for the most losses in a Major League Baseball season with 121. But the Rockies have been playing decent ball since the All Star break (beat the Cubs on Sunday, in fact), and with 24 games left they need to win just 3 to better the Sox.

And the NewsWheel is an essential offering! Everybody is saying so. Thank you for your attention to the NewsWheel.

Grateful West-Coast reader

Cecelia Kafer — Here in the Pacific Northwest, the Picayune Sentinel arrives at or shortly after 4 a.m., which is when I usually get up, so I enjoy it with my first cup of coffee. I learn so much from all the comments and discussions on this page, and Tuesdays and Thursdays are high points of my week. Many thanks to all of you!

Zorn — Adding my thanks to all the commenters. You make me — and each other — smarter.

In case you missed it, here’s the latest ‘Premium Issue’ for which Sunday Tribune home-delivery subscribers are charged nearly $16

If Sunday home-delivery subscribers don’t want to pay $15.99 up to 15 times a year for these sorts of Sunday inserts they probably don’t want, they need to email cswork_level1@tribune.cust-serv.com (don’t forget the underscore between cswork and level1) and opt out for six months. The other option is to call customer service — 312-546-7900 — and navigate the phone tree.

For those who haven’t yet mastered listening to podcasts …

First, get with it! It could hardly be easier to find and download podcasts and many of them are great.

But second, if you’re not quite there yet, WBEZ-FM 91.5 will be airing all seven episodes of “Division Street Revisited” at noon Tuesday through Friday. That podcast, hosted by my former Tribune colleague Mary Schmich, catches up on the stories of seven of the subjects featured in Studs Terkel’s 1967 oral history, “Division Street.”

Disclosure: My wife is on temporary assignment as a news editor at WBEZ.

Unpopular opinions?

In News & Views last Thursday I gave the back of my rhetorical hand to a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of airline passengers who booked window seats but then found themselves seated in one of those edge seats without a window:

The only value of a window seat at the outer edges of airplane seating is that it gives you a wall to lean your head against if you want to nap. Other than that, who but a child on their first flight needs to look out the window? It’s much handier to have an aisle seat so you don’t have to climb over anyone else when you have to pee.

This inspired numerous missives taking strong exception, the most powerful of which came from my friend and former Tribune colleague Barbara Brotman:

You are dead wrong in dismissing the class action suit against airlines that sell window seats with no windows.

No one looks out the window on an airplane? You know who does? I do, every flight.

I deliberately pick a window seat — one that is not above a wing — so that I can have a clear, unobstructed view of the fabulous sight below.

And oh, it is magnificent.

I have seen a glacier making its icy-river way down Greenland. The Colorado Rockies suddenly jutting skyward from the flat plains. Snow-capped mountain ranges, technicolor canyons, white salt flats, glittering rivers making S-curves through the landscape, acres and acres of farmland with their green circles of irrigated crops - it's an incredible show.

I can't imagine why everyone wouldn't want this tour of Planet Earth. You are getting views that you could not get any other way, unless you summit Mt. Everest. You can see the weird geology of the American west - mountains that look like poured cake batter, others that look like the planet was folded, which in fact it was.

I'm always mystified at people who ignore the show. I've been on flights that went over the Grand Canyon, and people had their window shades pulled down so they could watch a movie they didn't even want to see.

And yes, I've seen those window-less window seats at the center of this suit, and seethed. Being able to look out a window keeps me from getting queasy or nervous during turbulence. I flag those seats on SeatGuru, and consult the site before I buy my tickets.

I must concede that certain — many? most? — adult passengers who select window seats do so not just because they give nappers a wall to lean on. They covet the view, and have a legitimate small beef against any carrier who didn’t warn them that their “window seat” did not actually have a window, and a large beef against any carrier that charged them extra for such a seat.

But a class-action lawsuit that will likely result in a pittance for passengers and a big payday for lawyers? Why not a public negotiation with the carriers to refund any extra charges paid by passengers who got windowless window seats? Or how about an initiative with the Federal Aviation Administration to force all carriers to clearly inform passengers of windowless window seats when they are selecting their seats?

Anyway, I think I know how this will turn out, but …

Last week’s result

503 votes

Rena Calanca —As a former high school teacher in Mundelein, IL, (1996-2014) and as a parent of children who were born, raised, and educated in warm, sunny Mexico, I cannot relate to the "it's still summer" as a factor for why the fall semester should not start until after Labor Day. If we wait until September to start school, then the fall semester is considerably shorter than spring semester, and spring semester goes clear into June, when we have the same issue: it's summer and everyone wants to get outside.

DrummerBoy — A few years after I retired from Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, the administration changed the calendar to start school in mid-August, ending the first semester before winter break. School resumed in January and the end of the year happened before Memorial Day. The greater Stevenson community has seemingly adapted to this new schedule and it has worked well for the students.

Edward Fee —My thoughts on starting school after Labor Day based on 45 years as a teacher in both public and private schools, in the classroom as well as the administrative office: Starting school in August makes sense because the students are ready to return to school. Having had two months or more away from school —and experiencing summer-learning-loss — the kids are bored with summer and are ready to meet up with their classmates.

---

I posted another poll asking about the comparison some are making between ultra-tacky entertainer Liberace and President Donald Trump:

522 votes

Gillean Wilsak —One big difference between Trump and Liberace is that Liberace was actually very accomplished. He may have been glitzy to the point of tacky, but he was an excellent pianist and successful entertainer.

Garry Spelled Correctly — Liberace was in on the joke about his gaudy taste, unlike the demented, deranged fascist traitor, who clearly, seriously thinks we should admire his gilding of the Oval Office into the front parlor of the Everleigh Club!

The Everleigh Club

NewsWheel

Inspired by the WordWheel puzzle in the Monday-Friday Chicago Tribune and other papers, this puzzle asks you to identify the missing letter that will make a word or words — possibly proper nouns; reading either clockwise or counterclockwise — related to a story in the news or other current event. The answer is at the bottom of the newsletter.

The week’s best visual jokes

Here are some funny visual images I've come across recently on social media. Enjoy, then evaluate:

There’s still time to vote in the conventional Quip of the Week poll!

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Info

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.

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Answer to the NewsWheel puzzle

VACCINES