Caught Red-handed

White Sox fans tend to be directional haters—we hate certain teams from the East Coast and the North Side.  We also tend to say the Chicago media will look for any excuse not to cover our team.  But pull us aside and ask us if we really believe that, we might admit that’s just our South Side talking, until now, that is.  Now, we have proof.

Yesterday marked the third time in six days the Chicago Tribune passed on running a Sox story from Arizona.  There was room, mind you, with three-quarters of the front page of the sports’ section devoted to NCAA basketball tournament artwork (and, ironically, an ad for the Sox), but no Sox story.  Heck, if anyone deserved to left out of the sports’ section on Thursday, it was the Bulls, who the night before gave up a franchise-worst 113 points by a visiting team, after three quarters; our baby Bulls apparently forgot to play defense or that there are four quarters to a professional basketball game.  That explains a final score of Denver 135 Chicago 102.

But what about the Sox?  Well, the Trib laid off two sportswriters last week, which in the world of journalistic piggy move-up has left the Sox without anybody to cover them.  This marks the beginning of the end of the world as we know it, and I don’t feel fine.  But I am serious.

Both Chicago dailies are in a death spiral; the end of print here is more a matter of when, not if.  News in the future will be delivered, all cramped, on a screen.  My grandchildren—if I should be so blessed—will have no idea what it’s like to have the kitchen table covered with sports’ stories and box scores, to say nothing of the Sunday comics in color.

I was a sickly kid who learned about sports through watching and reading.  I’m pretty sure the comics taught me how to read and the box scores gave me a reason to learn arithmetic; batting averages and ERAs are all about multiplication and division.  I just needed some motivation to figure out quotients and multiplicands.

All the great columnists, those who could make you feel like you were an athlete and an athlete was no different from you, are gone.  The box scores are shrinking to the point of invisibility.  The new motto for the new journalism will be: All the news that fits to app.

God help us all.