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The granddaddy of the graphic novel, a show

case for sustainable art,C

hicago SketchFest starts, where to eat after m

idnight, and more

PL U

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Our annual

COM

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starts on page 11

Michael Lenehan on

“citizen journalism”

Ben Joravsky on our lam

e smoking ban

Michael M

iner onhom

eland security

Ted Cox on the Cubs and the Sox

Bob Mehr on

the RIA

A’s latest victory

Liz Arm

strong on Liz A

rmstrong

December 30, 2005

Section One Letters 3ColumnsHot Type 4Did somebody say something about homeland security failing?

The Straight Dope 5Traveling cargo class?

The Works 8What’s being “compromised” by the smoking ban

Chicago Antisocial 10No regrets

The Sports Section 24Let’s hear it for putting the suspense back in baseball

PulloutComics Special 11New work by Ivan Brunetti, Mark Fischer and Rob Syers, Steve Krakow,Paul Hornschemeier, Onsmith, JeffreyBrown, John Hankiewicz, and more

ReviewsArt 28“Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art”at the Smart Museum

Books 30The Contract With God Trilogy by Will Eisner

PlusInk WellThis week’s crossword: Sounds Like Love

Modest Proposals

H ave you heard that the newspaper business isgoing to hell? It’s in all the papers, but nobody readsthe papers anymore so you might have missed the

news. Assuming you still care about news, which you don’t, according to the papers.Circulation’s down, ad revenue’s down, jobs are vanishing everywhere you look. A few

weeks ago the Tribune Company capped a series of buyouts and layoffs by spiking the NewCity News Service, formerly the City News Bureau, the venerable Chicago institution thatused to train the journalists of the future. Evidently it’s not needed continued on page 26

ON THE COVER: ARCHER PREWITT

MA

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A Year Without JournalismLet’s see what our brave new media future looks like

when there are no real reporters to steal from.

By Michael Lenehan

26 CHICAGO READER | DECEMBER 30, 2005 | SECTION ONE

anymore because journalismdoesn’t have a future.

Who’s to blame for all this?Mostly Craig Newmark, the geekwho started Craigslist ten yearsago as an e-mail guide to “coolevents” in the Bay Area. Now,with just 18 employees—fewerpeople than it takes to deliver theReader every Thursday—Craigslist is a global juggernautsucking up millions of dollarsthat used to go to newspaperclassifieds. According to onemuch-repeated estimate, it costdaily papers in San Franciscoalone about $50 million last year.

But Craig is not the only culprit.There’s also eBay, which hassiphoned off who knows how

many more millions of dollars bymaking camera-for-sale ads obso-lete. And Google, which hasrocked the advertising world bydelivering ads to people whomight actually want to see them.And online journals like Slate andSalon, and Yahoo and Microsoft,which lurk behind their moun-tains of cash waiting to spring outand copy anything that works forGoogle or eBay. And Wonketteand InstaPundit and theDecembrist and all their bloggingfriends whose idea of a good timeis giving yourself a funny nameand distracting normal peoplewho used to read newspapers.

And of course there are thenewspapers themselves, which,back in the days of Internet

Bubble #1, in their desperationto maintain “mindshare” trainedreaders to look for their newsonline, for free, rather than onnewsprint spread out on thekitchen table, as God intended.

Hardly a day goes by, it seems,without some Web behemothannouncing a major new initia-tive to suck the lifeblood out ofthe news business. Of course it’snot their intent to destroy jour-nalism, or to bankrupt compa-nies that employ thousands ofdecent, hardworking taxpayers,or to force the teenage daughtersof reporters and editors into livesof prostitution. They’re just try-ing to make a better world.

Last month, when Googleintroduced Google Base, they

presented it as a service thatallows people to post “all types”of information online and assign“attributes” to it that will make iteasy to find. For example, youcan post Grandma’s chicken anddumplings recipe and assign to itsuch database attributes as“recipes,” “chicken,” “American,”and “traditional”; these becomecategories that searchers can useto find the recipe. Neato.

What Google did not say, butweary newspaper people werequick to notice, is that you canalso post a description and somepictures of your apartment onDayton Street and assign to itsuch attributes as “Apartments,”“Chicago,” “Lincoln Park,” “two-bedroom,” “$1,400.” And if youhappen to run a rental agencyand have hundreds of apart-ments to list, and if you happento know how to put them in adatabase or have a sixth grader athome who can do it for you,Google Base gives you a way toupload your “items” (please don’tcall them classified ads) in bulk.Just in case Craigslist is not easyor free enough for you.

Craig, too, is also bent on mak-ing a better world. And now thathe has done so for job seekers,apartment hunters, and sexualpredators, he’s turning to journal-ism. Just before Thanksgiving helet it be known that he’s involvedin an online project that will usethe same “wisdom of the masses”approach that informs Craigslist.He’s being coy about the details,but he has dropped phrases like“citizen journalism,” “networks oftrust,” and “reputation mecha-nisms,” suggesting that he’s talk-ing about a cross betweenWikipedia, the online encyclope-dia edited by its readers, andGoogle News, which boasts ofpresenting “the most relevantnews first” by compiling reportsfrom more than 4,500 sources“solely by computer algorithms,without human intervention.”

The day after Craig first talkedpublicly about his new project, Inoticed the lead item onWonkette, about an announce-ment that Dick Cheney wouldappear at a fund-raiser for belea-guered congressman Tom DeLay.I noticed that, according toWonkette, the news story thatinspired her fulminations(“Evidently the more event-appropriate MC team of JackAbramoff and DukeCunningham is already bookedfor that night”) had come fromYahoo, via Sploid. In other wordsWonkette, whose blog is ownedby Gawker Media, spotted thisnews on another blog owned byGawker Media, whose writer hadspotted it on Yahoo. Nowheredoes Wonkette betray even thevaguest awareness of the personwho actually reported that storyor even the “mainstream media”that disseminated it. The Yahoostory came from the AssociatedPress, which had picked it upfrom the Houston Chronicle. Forthe record, the Chronicle storywas written by a Washington

bureau reporter namedSamantha Levine. But as far asWonkette was concerned, itcame from Yahoo, via Sploid.That’s the way it works in theblogosphere. The stories arejust . . . out there.

That item about Cheney andDeLay remained at the top ofWonkette for five days, thanks tothe long Thanksgiving weekend.Wonkette doesn’t do weekends.

A couple days earlier, DavidCarr’s column in the New YorkTimes told of a “plague week” inthe newspaper business, a grue-some series of layoffs, ethicalquestions, and technology-induced travails includingGoogle Base (but not Craig’sforay into citizen journalism,which was yet to be announced).At the end Carr reminded hisreaders of the gaping void at thebottom of our brave new mediafuture. “For Google’s news aggre-gator to function, somebody hasto do the reporting, to make thecalls. . . . News robots can’t meetwith a secret source in an under-ground garage or pull back theblankets on a third-rate burglaryto reveal a conspiracy at thehighest reaches of government.”And, I would add, you can’t relyon bloggers to do it, becausesomething might happen overThanksgiving weekend.

“Tactical and ethical blundersaside,” Carr concluded, “actualjournalists come in handy onoccasion.”

I think it’s time for actual jour-nalists to drive this point home.Today, therefore, I am proposinga yearlong journalism strike. Iam urging reporters and editorsaround the world to put downtheir notebooks, close their lap-tops, hang up their phones . Liedown and be counted! Let’s haveno reporting, no editing, noapplication of any human intelli-gence whatsoever to events pub-lic or private till January 1, 2007.I’m calling it the Year WithoutJournalism. Let’s all relax, let go,and float blissfully in the infor-mation-free state (excuse me, Imean free-information state)that our public awaits so eagerly.Let one of those news robotshandle the hired truck scandaland further crimes of the Daleyadministration. Let’s see ifWonkette can deal with the devi-ous bastards in the executivebranch any better than JudithMiller did. Let’s have some ofthose citizen journalists call BurtNatarus and see if they can fig-ure out what the hell he’s talkingabout. With no news to aggre-gate, no facts to ruminate, thealgorithms and the bedroompundits will turn on each otherlike mirrors, producing a perfectregression of narcissistic self-reflection, repeating endlessly,adding nothing, ever shrinking,ad infinitum.

Meanwhile our beaten-downjournalists will get a much-needed year of rest and relaxation.Or maybe some time to learn anew skill, like computer pro-gramming. v

A Year Without Journalism

continued from page 1

CHICAGO READER | DECEMBER 30, 2005 | SECTION ONE 27