Poor, Poor Pitiful Trib

The NFL burped in Palm Beach this week, and sportswriters are there to cover it. In the world of print journalism, that means something has to go to make room. At the Chicago Tribune, that something is baseball and hockey. God forbid we miss any news coming out of the NFL owners’ meeting. Because a friend of Jerry Reinsdorf bought the Trib back in 2008 and wrecked it, a hedge fund now owns what’s left, and that includes a sports’ section that usually goes just six pages on most days. I counted three big stories Tuesday on our lovable Munsters, what with their new general manager and head coach. That in turn reduced the Cubs to seven paragraphs of coverage, this for a team once part of the Tribune empire. And that’s seven more paragraphs than the Blackhawks got. More of the same today, plus some, as in four Bears’ stories. The Cubs were granted more coverage, the Blackhawks the same, which is to say nothing. “Chicago’s best sports section, as judged by the Associated Press Sports Editors” runs the plug at the top of the first page. If this is the best, I’d hate to see the worst. Sports in the Sun-Times is totally different, basically, just like it was ten years ago. Oh, the section today is full of Bears’ crap, but there’s also a Blackhawks’ story. Not only is there a full story on the Bulls’ 107-94 win over the Wizards, it comes with an honest-to-goodness box score. There’s also a regular outdoors’ columnist, and today he did a story on smelt (it’s a Chicago/April thing/fish). This is both an astute and cynical move. If you want sports, you pick up the Sun-Times. If you’re looking for the latest out of Washington or Ukraine, you look elsewhere. What stories there are rate one small step above the Trib’s Blackhawks’ coverage, and they tend to get buried next to the obits.