Who Will Take Over the Sun-Times?
The Sun-Times is badly broken, said Sam McKeel, on coming to Chicago. The Sun-Times is the heart and soul of this company. My first responsibility is to fix it.
Towers was ME under the Scotsman Charles Wilson and the Australian Roger Wood, Murdoch executives shipped in from London and New York, respectively, to keep the Sun-Times going, and then under Murdoch’s ultimate choice of editor, the New Zealander turned New Yorker Frank Devine. Publisher Robert Page bought out Murdoch in 1986 and that was the end of Devine–he and Page couldn’t stand each other. But Towers soldiered on. Next he served under Matthew Storin, a studious product of the Boston Globe whom Page hired as his blue-ribbon signal that the Sun-Times was back in steady hands.
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But to the large portion of his staff that the years had made numb and cynical, Towers remained a custodian. Not decisive enough. Not independent enough. Not creative enough. Not inspirational enough for a newsroom that longed to feel reborn.
Our choice? Well, given the need for binding wounds and watering roots, not to mention closing circles and indulging ironies, we’d like to see the job go to Katherine Fanning.
And now the September issue of Chicago magazine carries a short article by Sun-Times investigative reporters Deborah Nelson and Tom Brune. It’s about a “drug ring” inside Evanston’s Saint Francis Hospital. Hearing rumors of the operation, hospital administrators hired a private detective to investigate, and he eventually made a case against a doctor, three nurses, and two other employees. All six either quit or were fired. The nurses were reported to the state licensing board.
We appreciate his reservations. The Chicago article troubles us too for what goes unsaid: not just the name of the doctor and the specifics of his misbehavior, but also the extent of the problem this tale purports to exemplify. But Chicago’s editors satisfied themselves that the story was solid enough to print, and the Sun-Times shouldn’t have let it get away. In the end, Mercy Hospital also sent the doctor packing–but only after hearing about him from Nelson and Brune.
