Dumbstruck
Columnists were unusually mute–for lack of anything adequate to say, I suppose, as aside from God, there was no one to wag a finger at. (According to Eric Zorn in the Tribune, European and Australian columnists went ahead and wagged that finger.) Four days went by, and then the Tribune’s Steve Chapman wrote a column that left God out of it. “Moments like these mock the notion that human beings should live in harmony with nature,” he said. “When did nature ever live in harmony with us? The natural world can be wondrous in its beauty and mystery, but it is not our friend. It is a pervasive, relentless threat to our mere existence, and often, that threat is carried out.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
At a proper time for blunt, categorical overstatement, this felt to me like not only the right but the only thing to say. A couple of days later David Brooks sidled up to the abyss himself in the New York Times. But Brooks blinked. “Nature doesn’t seem much like a friend or nurse this week,” he told us lamely, and concluded on an odd note of grandiose self-pity: “This is a moment to feel deeply bad, for the dead and for those of us who have no explanation.” Few of his readers who felt “deeply bad” for the dead were likely to be as moved by a columnist who’d lost nothing but his usual certainty.
If brief public embarrassment is the price of a comfy retirement, most of us would probably be willing to pay it. Jack Fuller’s a scrupulous guy who’s sensitive to appearances, but I don’t know if he’s embarrassed. I asked him by e-mail, but he ignored the question.
But against that triumph AJR reporter Rachel Smolkin places diminishing profit margins, dramatic staff cuts, shrinking news holes, and wrenching attempts to combine resources–not to mention major circulation scandals at Newsday and Hoy. She sprinkles her story with language like “heightened fears,” “draconian,” and “kneecapped,” then concludes with the observation that Fuller, a career journalist who’s a former editor of the Tribune, is being succeeded by Scott Smith, who rose through the business side of the company. Which is a way of suggesting that any newspaper people who were grousing under Fuller will now find out how good they had it.
“As to whether it inhibits what I say, I realize that something of a tradition has developed in newspapering in which a person, after spending years building an institution, feels compelled to denigrate it on the way out. Consulting agreement or no, I want no part of that tradition, not least because I am so proud of the journalism Tribune Company produces. The company is in good hands. Dennis FitzSimons chose the right successor for me in Scott Smith, and Scott has his priorities right.
The Sun-Times may or may not be searching for a new editor soon, but it’s unlikely to keep the current one much longer. Rumors that the New York Daily News was courting Michael Cooke first bubbled up a year ago. Now the word around the Daily News is that Cooke will arrive in February.
