I
learned how to read thanks in large part to the Sunday comics. Flash Gordon, Gasoline Alley, Prince Valiant—I
could follow the story in (extraordinarily artful) pictures. It only seemed natural that the words would
make everything better yet.
After
comics came sports. Without knowing, I
must have absorbed the inverted pyramid and the Five W’s of journalism (guess
what they are) by the time I was eleven.
There were also certain elements of style to be learned from reading sportswriters
like David Condon, Bill Gleason and Jerome Holtzman. They all wrote with an eye to facts, attitude—the
air we Chicagoans breathe—and storytelling.
I can’t imagine being a writer now without first having sat on the front
porch reading the afternoon Chicago American.
But
if I were a kid growing up today, oh boy, would I be in trouble. The comics are reduced to stamp-sized panels
stuck on a couple of pages buried in the Sunday ads; there is no art there, or sign
of Prince Valiant. As for sports, the
writers have plenty of attitude if next to no ability to express it in a
coherent, engaging fashion. And where four
papers once exited, there are now two, though judging from what I saw this
weekend, not for long.
The
White Sox were in Seattle, so I didn’t expect a box score. On Saturday, the Sun-Times offered even less,
a full-page picture of Chris Sale with caption.
That’s all, Sox fans. The Bears
are the Bears, and the Cubs are hot. Somebody
has to suffer, and it’s us.
On
Sunday, it was another picture of Sale, the box score for Friday’s and five
paragraphs from the Associated Press. Yesterday’s
box score for a Sunday afternoon game made it into this morning’s paper along
with a full story, again from the AP.
Apparently, the Times can’t or won’t pick up airfare, lodging and food
for its Sox beat writer.
Not
with a bang but a whimper….
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