Don't believe the hype: Gothamist has become a weak shell of itself run by a quasi non-profit mega corp with almost no former staff hired back.
Congratulations WNYC for finishing the union-busting job started by Joe Ricketts.
It'll be fine. Nobody in the community will read it. Nobody in the communities next to the community will read it. If it gets under the skin of those living outside those communities, it will have done its job. It's not like Chicago and downstate Illinois politics became beacons of democracy after Northwestern's Medill school of journalism switched its name to Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications. That school's name sounds like a feed stream for Leo Burnett to get fresh grads for promotion of the Emanuel/Musk Blu-Clay Tunnel Hyperloop express.
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Interesting article. Editors: "Has laid dormant?" Has lain . . . .
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I'm fascinated by this long in depth article talking about all the potential problems and pitfalls and ethical dilemma's for Chance, all spelled out very clearly in white people's vernacular. In essence "Here kid, this is how you should do journalism the way we do it as championed by the Colombia School of Journalism."
But when the NY Times sold the Boston Globe (at a loss of about 950 million dollars) to John Henry there was no such article warning him how to do journalism let alone warning the public about the serious conflict of interest of having one of the richest men in town, who owns the local sports team, requests (and is granted) tax breaks and land giveaways from the local politicians, run the largest media organization in the City and the Region.
As it was well put in the movie "Being There": "It surely is a white man's world in America."
Go Chance!!! Do what you think is right. That is the freedom you allegedly get in this country when you earn your own money and choose to do with it what you want. Don't let the NYTimes and their cronies tell you what to do.
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@kevin As noted in the article, Chance doesn't have the best history with the media. So the tone and topic of this article is justified. Further, hip hop has always been a one-way communication form that has tremendous potential (quite realized already) for brainwashing.
And this is reinforced by the knee-jerk defensive tone of your post. If Chance reacts the way you do, then that is not good for the quality of the Chicagoist as journalism (although not so much if it will merely be a mouthpiece for Chance the Rapper's activism, which I think is likely).
@MA
I appreciate your thoughts. But don't you think that John Henry has tried to brain wash the citizens of Boston into thinking that tax breaks for his other business interests are good, and that land giveaways to the Red Sox are a good idea as well.
I find it interesting that we say a rapper is "brainwashing" his readers, but the Boston Globe is 'informing' its readers.
I think the market will decide whether his ownership of Chicagoist is any good. To me the tone of the article is of an established paper of the traditionally rich white power stable is telling a young black rapper how to do his job.
I have no skin in this game. I don't listen to Chance's music, I have family in Chicago but no business interest. I just feel that there is the hint of condescension and hypocrisy in this article.
maybe change that thumbnail - it really looks like he's holding an M16 over his head there
"Broad editorial freedom" may have created a Chicagoist that you wanted.
Chance seems to want something different: an "editorial agenda." With that "agenda" being not only what is covered, but who does the covering.
In the age of Fox and Breitbart and the Koch's funneling untold millions (billions?) into right wing fantasy extremism, what Chance seems to be aiming for is welcome and needed.
May he succeed with a new Chicagoist that "does news" differently from what a white dominated media generally does (here it does not matter if that media is liberal, right wing [it is a misnomer to call it "conservative"], moderate or extreme, a white dominated media has a "take" regardless of claims of unbiased coverage and "editorial freedom" - "freedom" for whom and for what thinking, one might ask).
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Good for Mr. Chance!
We need to protect journalistic integrity in every form, especially in today's horrific, hate filled climate.
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I agree with you. Reporters should represent truly. We need to reward objectively and don't be the personal attack.
I find it interesting that in America, institutions of the people - schools, welfare programs, public television, public radio - are so entirely abandoned, that the Times will dedicate an entire article on whether a private donor is selfless or not. Of course he isn't. Why should he be? The American people have been fairly and democratically dismantling state-funded endeavors for decades. If a mogul is nice enough to throw some of HIS money toward your intentionally-underfunded charities or media or schools, it is naive (and somewhat pathetic) to seriously debate whether he would be unbiased!
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I am sure Chance has enough experience in entertainment to understand at this point that news is like YouTube. You have to be vital to succeed. It’s not enough to report the news anymore. You have to have entertainment value and play off of your audience’s unwavering beliefs to succeed.
It might catch on, but its been done already: Rapping the News in Senegal: Hip-Hop duo Keyti and Xuman's 'Journal Rappe'
* https://youtu.be/OYiYfiWQ6t0
* https://youtu.be/JODXe_y5Zps
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"A heavily cited example was the way Chance’s team used his clout to nudge MTV News into removing an already published, gently critical review of his 2016 tour in MTV News. The following year, his entourage also physically blocked a Chicago Sun-Times reporter from taking his picture at a public City Council meeting on plans to invest in a police training center. Chance reportedly said he wanted his privacy."
Yeeeah no...definitely NOT local, or any, media's superhero.
MTV today is reality TV with occasional "top 40" payola-chosen tracks and the People Magazine of music news. If Chance is THAT concerned about THAT network's coverage, then he's far too insecure and censorious to be a rapper, much less a suitable owner of a media group.
But then, such personal merchantability-and-fitness-for-a-particular-purpose is already dead. Kanye exists, after all.
More likely he'll pull a Ricketts Part Deux on Chicagoist than pull them from the ashes, especially when its staff turn the microphones and sic the anonymous sources on him. I see no light at the end of the war-on-media tunnel.
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Kim, thank you so much for your contribution on our media landscape here in Chicago. I followed on over to Block Club after DNA Info closed, and there are myriad other, very tiny, news websites that report on neighborhood issues without requiring much top-down scrutiny. It lends a purity to journalism in a city where the truth often struggles to reach the light of day. I have also loosely followed Chance the Rapper's endeavors here, and will be interested to see where this next project goes. I'll be very excited if Chicagoist can stick to its roots.
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There's giving back, then there's bleeding. I wish him the best of of luck as journalism and running a periodical could not be more demanding in 2018 and beyond.
We are well past the 24hr cooling period so this is no longer an impulse purchase. Hope he puts good ppl in place, and that he's got great backers. As was mentioned, he has to clear the same hurdles that stood before the last ownership - much about costs. And the last thing music artists want to do is lose money.
“I got a hit list so long I don’t know how to finish/I bought the Chicagoist just to run you racist [expletive] outta business,”
Announcing a major purchase like this via a song is - cute. But the reality is that this industry is "perennially underfunded" - to quote a previous NYT piece. This is going to take some real work, and hopefully Chance will be able to produce resonant writing in this new version of The Chicagoist, and "in the black".
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This sounds like a great experiment. Let's see what comes out of it. Far more interesting than the acquisition of the Post by Bezos.
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@Josie
Really? WaPo was a center right newspaper before Bezos transformed the culture. Now they're in the forefront of criticizing the innumerable excesses of the Trump administration. Unthinkable under previous ownership. That's why Trump bashes Amazon. Readership has soared, they're read not just across the country but internationally as well.
And you're comparing that to a regional newspaper?
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Tax all these rich people sitting on mounds of money. End charity. End this enthrallment with rich "giving back." No more looking to Gates and Buffet and all these elites of all types who choose where to donate or invest "their" money while the poor and the working classes continue to pay for diminishing (and still much-needed) services. There are certain things that are necessities for any sort of rule by the people to even have a chance. A free press is one of the most important parts of a democracy, which this country has never had and will never have so long as it's run by those who've been running it for too many years as their own personal play ground. As much as I want to applaud Chance the Rapper (indeed, for such a young person to do this restores a bit more hope in this old person), I am dubious, thanks to the keen insights in this piece, that he does this without personal interest in the mix. Once this paper becomes his property will the paper's ability to speak truth to power be challenged? Power is corrodes and then it corrupts. It may be hard to see this when it happens since the president is such a glaring example. All other monarch wannabes do seem to pale. But make no mistake: we're all capable of corroding. Take all this excess money and use it to benefit the needy and underpaid.
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@Domenick DIdn't he use some of that money to bolster the idea of a free press by resurrecting a decent source? Issue is, any news outlet is going to be biased one way or the other, depending on ownership (especially if its govt. funded). It's hard to beat the example this guy is setting – give away tons of money to public schools and other non-profits to try to cover some of those diminishing services you mentioned. I think it's a good experiment, I'd like to see how it goes.
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@Malik
Oh, don't get me wrong: I am impressed. He saved a paper and that is great. And I personally think an unbiased media source is a whole lot of hogwash. I read several biased sources---the Times is one and so is the Wall Street Journal and Counterpunch---because the process of selection of story is necessarily a biased affair. That newsworthy always seems, in the mainstream media, both left and right, to favor what the well-to-do want covered is a disaster and I do hope this saved source will represent the little people. I doubt it. But I am hopeful. But I am also really really really tired of, as Bellware aptly if not originally puts it, this culture's hero worship. We keep waiting for the well-to-do to fill the void the well-to-do have created by underpaying workers and undereducating children in the public school system and lying to them all through their stranglehold on the media.
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I'm sure the first order of business at Chicagoist is to not write from a vantage point of us vs. them. I hope the Chicagoist is revived with a majority of marginalized voices who can maybe show what news SHOULD be about.
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good questions. let's see how he answers.
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The man is putting his money where the mouths...err, eyes are.
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