Guild to Red Streak: Not So Fast
“We thought the whole paper should be guild,” says business reporter Bob Mutter, chairman of the Sun-Times’s guild unit. “We were willing to give them a certain amount of time, but they asked for spring. It really didn’t get terribly unpleasant, but it probably was just about to. We were overly patient, but our patience was wearing very thin.”
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In Cooke’s view the guild is a handicap the Tribune isn’t burdened with, and the changes it forced will make it harder for the Sun-Times to fight a battle it can’t afford to quit or lose. “As long as RedEye publishes, Red Streak publishes,” he says. “There’s very little downside to the Tribune losing this and folding RedEye. Only one set of readers is in play here–Sun-Times readers. We’ve got them–they want them. They’re not satisfied with owning 70 percent of the advertising market. They’re not satisfied with owning the Cubs. They’re not happy that they’ve bought Los Angeles and they’ve bought Long Island and they’ve bought Baltimore. They want to buy the downtown young Chicago readers as well. So we have to react to this.
“Red Streak stacks up very well with a quarter of the resources,” Cooke continues. “We’re fighting like you wouldn’t believe. I’m sorry the union takes the position they’re taking. It harms the paper, and in the end it might harm their own members. But they don’t see it that way.”
“It will be a problem,” says Mutter, “because–well, we don’t like freelance columnists in the paper. We’ve grieved in the past over freelance columnists.”
“I’m disappointed he believes we have an interest in any way, shape, or form in damaging the paper,” says Minkkinen. “We’ve bent over backward for these people.”
I’m writing to defend Bob Greene. Not for the womanizing or the bathos or the toupee–the stuff he’s been ridiculed for–but for the piece of his history some experienced journalists have been willing to condemn as journalistic fraud.
