Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley wants city workers to closely read a Boston newspaper.
Huh?
Last month, I went to Boston on assignment. While there, the Boston Herald ran an investigation of outrageous loafing and moonlighting by that city`s building inspectors.
The revelations were far more egregious than, say, those in the trademark micro-exposes of WBBM-Ch. 2`s Walter Jacobson on malingering Streets and Sanitation Department workers. In Boston, guys were hanging out at home and bars all day, with one driving around in a Mercedes-Benz as a liquor salesman, submitting reports that lied about inspections being made and legal notices issued.
I passed the stories on to Chicago Building Commissioner Dan Weil, an attorney, former prosecutor and Jim Thompson loyalist who was hired by Daley. He showed them to Daley, who was duly concerned about anything similar playing out here. Thursday, copies of the articles were given to the department`s 525 employees, including inspectors. There was no cover note.
”Certain things speak for themselves,” Weil said.
In Boston, Mayor Ray Flynn, a diligent fellow who`s popular despite big fiscal woes, acted with dispatch. He transferred the department head, despite his being much-lauded and a close chum, and brought in his ace manager, a woman who oversaw housing and capital development.
”One individual loafing on the job can make life miserable for every city worker who gives his or her best to the people of the city,” said Neil Sullivan, Flynn`s chief policy adviser.
”It may be impossible to supervise everyone in the field at all times, but that`s why a swift response is essential to put new supervisory systems in place when someone is shown to be abusing the public trust by loafing.”
If this has a salutary effect, let`s thank the Herald-and buy our dutiful inspectors Red Sox caps.
Journalists, a lazier bunch than the public imagines, often can`t resist that Pavlovian impulse to round up the usual suspects. There was a reminder of that in a Page 1 story on children`s programming in Wednesday`s New York Times.
A story by TV industry writer Bill Carter quoted David Poltrack, research chief at CBS and an ever-accessible, loyal defender of the shaky institution of network TV. Poltrack shows up so often in stories by TV industry reporters that his absence-be it for vacation, illness or personal business-must turn reporters apoplectic and send them searching frantically through Rolodexes for a surrogate.
Wednesday`s was the 11th story in which Carter, for example, has quoted Poltrack this year, according to a computer search. He quoted him in 19 stories last year, meaning he`s now on a record pace. Given budget cuts at CBS, one hopes that the paper is decent enough to give Poltrack free home delivery.
The latest report from Schaumburg-based Audit Bureau of Circulations on newspapers is dispiriting, with few papers in the Chicago area, other than perhaps the suburban Daily Herald, having much to rave about.
While the prime battle in the Chicago-area industry is arguably in the suburbs, with the Tribune and competitors, notably the Daily Herald, fighting for high-demographic readers, it`s instructive to discern the trend in city of Chicago reading.
The Chicago Tribune sells 209,311 copies daily in the city, and the Sun-Times 284,345, or a total of 493,656. On Sunday, it`s 289,132 for the Tribune and 266,271 for the Sun-Times, or 555,403.
In 1970, the daily total for the two papers in the city was 618,138. The daily total reached a high, in 1975, of 667,787-the Tribune at 318,978 and the Sun-Times 348,809-before circulation started to fall. In 1970, the combined Sunday total was 750,237, reaching a high, again in 1975, of 760,794, before descending.
Factor in the defunct Chicago Today and Chicago Daily News, and it gets more depressing. The last year that Chicago Today, the Daily News, Tribune and Sun-Times were all alive was 1974. That March, 1,088,277 copies were sold daily in the city.
Sure, some people bought two or more papers. But the current 493,656 figure is uninspiring and, illiteracy and language problems among growing ethnic communities aside, raises questions about how both papers address large parts of the urban community.
If you wonder what TV deems to be adroit synergy in an era in which the networks are running scared, you had only to be tuned to WBBM-Ch. 2 on Tuesday.
First, there was the network airing of ”The Accused,” the Jodie Foster movie based on a rape case in Fall River, Mass. The commercial breaks here included tabloid-like promos for the 10 p.m. news about fear sweeping the Lincoln Park area.
The station led the newscast with melodramatic hyping of three reported rapes, a long-scheduled community meeting that considered the situation, and the passing out of informational leaflets as evidence of a dramatic turn of events. It then threw in Gene Siskel interviewing Foster.
”There`s not been an increase in sexual assaults in the area,” informs Police Sgt. Robert O`Leary of the Area 6 violent crimes unit on the North Side.
”You don`t want to minimize (the horror of a rape case), but it looked like they were taking advantage of the timing of the movie,” he says.
Few students at Beverly Hills High School-an academic haven of the Hollywood crowd-envision settling in Chicago. Jeff Spitz never did, but he stumbled into town and seems quite glad he did.
Spitz, 32, is an independent filmmaker whose excellent look at community organizing, ”From the Bottom Up,” aired on public television last week, repeating at 1 p.m. Sunday on WTTW-Ch. 11. A piece on racism for ”The `90s,” a showcase of independent filmmaking, airs May 14 on Ch. 11.
Spitz is a Valley Boy who grew up in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles before his dad, a manufacturer of windbreakers, and mom, a Christian missionary, moved into Los Angeles. He attended Beverly Hills High with Jamie Lee Curtis and Sean Cassidy and later played football at the University of California at Berkeley before switching to the University of California at Los Angeles and getting into film.
When his folks were divorcing, he lived with a huge black family (12 children) and was the only white in an all-black choir at a Pentecostal church. That helps explain his interest when he read about Harold Washington`s campaign for mayor in Chicago.
He moved here in 1983 and met Washington, getting his support in raising funds for a documentary on Washington`s alma mater, Roosevelt University (a
”daring social experiment ahead of its time,” he terms the school).
And while researching a film on housing, he met Washington buddy Al Raby, late head of the city`s Commission on Human Relations, who led him to a fair- housing group. When a meeting ensued, the housing group`s leader surfaced with a ”gorgeous” assistant, whom Spitz promptly fell in love with and married.
Spitz, his wife, Jennifer, and their child live on the North Side, testament to government serving its citizens.
”I may be the only person whose marriage is a direct referral from the Commission on Human Relations,” says the former Valley Boy.
The ever-inept Chicago public school system, faced with a $315-million budget shortfall, should pay attention to a typically brilliant proposal from Ald. Robert Shaw (9th), reported in the black-oriented Chicago Defender.
Shaw, a self-designated guardian of the city`s moral fiber who voted against a human-rights ordinance protecting gays and lesbians because ”the Bible clearly says that man should not lie with man,” urges a city tax on 900-number phone calls that deal with sex.
”Some of these (sex phone) calls cost $50 per call,” he declared, ”and the city should look at how we can extract some money from these numbers.”
Great idea. After that, let`s tax calls to astrology, psychology, party, betting and Jose Canseco hot lines, as well as to numbers hawking albums by Roger Whittaker or that tribute to high technology, the tummy-firming Abdominizer.
