Chicago Lawyer: New Management, Less Muck
The September issue of Chicago Lawyer comes out in a few days and you’ll find Rob Warden inside saying goodbye. It’ll be clear from the rest of the issue that he’s already gone.
No Chicago newspaperman as seasoned as Judge (he’s worked at both the Tribune and Sun-Times and for a while ran City News Bureau) could say that about the little guy and be happy with how it sounds. He pushed on. “I mean, the Tribune and Sun-Times both do investigative reporting–I’m trying to explain this–but it’s only a part of the mix. Neither one of those papers could be called investigative, muckraking papers, but they do it, it’s a part of it, but it’s not the reason for their existence. I work for the Law Bulletin Publishing Company, 134 years old. It serves the legal community and that’s what this publication’s going to do. Which makes it different than it was.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
She mentioned, “On the commentary page we will have a monthly guest article on ethics and professionalism, The first will be written by Robert Cummins, former chairman of the state judicial inquiry board.”
“It’s a piece on false convictions. I believe 154 people have been sentenced to death under the current Illinois capital punishment statute. Of those, I believe at least eight are innocent. Eight specific people. And I’m enumerating those cases.
That’s a smart, useful undertaking. But here’s how the recently judged ’88 competition worked out. The winning story was a piece called “The Real George Bush” that appeared last October in Willamette Week, the alternative weekly in Portland, Oregon. It was a high-concept, low-effort exercise. Publisher Richard Meeker simply culled the alternative press for derogatory information on Bush that had been largely ignored by the mainstream press. About which Meeker concluded, “Their laziness, inattention, cowardice and pretenses of fairness have helped hand this election to George Bush.”
“Obviously, we’re not dealing in an ideal world,” said Jensen.
