More than 11 years after I departed the graphics department of the Chicago Tribune, I’m there again. Kind of.
I was hired by Mike Kellams — a designer when I worked there, but now he’s assistant managing editor for sports — to add a little graphics-and-brainstorming push to the Sports Smack feature in the Sunday Trib.
Check it out here, if you get a chance.
Just like old times. Sigh…
It’s not unusual for newspapers to run special poster pages commemorating their local sports heroes.
It is unusual, however, for a paper to run a poster page of a sports hero from the opposing team.
Yet, that’s what the Chicago Tribune did today. With the hometown Blackhawks preparing for game six of the Stanley Cup finals against Philadelphia, the Tribune ran a “very special” pullout poster of the Flyers’ Chris Pronger:
The photoshop work and the name tweak, you can see for yourself. Some of the other text here, however, is a little difficult to read.
The subhead says:
Looks like Tarzan, skates like Jane
The three bullet points below — using hockey pucks — say:
The Tribune even promoed to this off of page one today. (Admittedly, the poster above is from the Trib’s single-copy tab edition. This excerpt is from the broadsheet home edition found at the Newseum):
Pronger was asked about it during a media session Tuesday in Philadelphia, where the Flyers will try to even the Stanley Cup finals against the Chicago Blackhawks with Game 6 on Wednesday.
“I don’t read what you guys write. Good or bad,” Pronger said.
The story cites women’s Olympic hockey gold medalist Angela Ruggiero as being irate about the poster. It then goes on to quote Tribune sports editor — and former designer — Mike Kellams:
“For her and others who took offense, I apologize. No qualifiers, I’m sorry,” Chicago Tribune sports editor Mike Kellams said in an e-mail. “We were just having a little fun with a guy who has come to personify all that has gotten under the collective skin of Blackhawks fans. Pronger is talented that way. And we were trying to connect to that emotion in a fun way.
“I grew up in Indiana and came to hockey as an adult. Ruggiero vs. me on the rink would be no contest. I know that from what she and her team did at the Vancouver Olympics.”
…”Some seem to hate it more than anything in life. Others think it’s funny. I figure most folks don’t care either way. But it’s no more complicated than this: We were just trying to have a little fun. That’s really it. Honest.”
My take? I think it’s funny as hell. We ought to do stuff like this a little more often.
On the other hand, I’ll bet Mike will be sweating the game Wednesday night. I hope the Blackhawks win, for his sake and for the sake of whoever will be within earshot of his telephone on Thursday.
Go here to read about the last time a major newspaper made fun of an opposing team member — in this case, a college basketball coach.
Find the ESPN story here. Find Yahoo Sports’ story here.
Find the online home of the poster itself here, along with a gazillion amusing comments.
Poynter’s Jim Romenesko linked to this today.
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UPDATE - Wednesday, 3:45 p.m.
Among the folks getting huffy about this page: Media columnist Christine Brennan of USA Today. She thinks the poster is sexist.
Brennan writes:
So here we go again, this time from a newspaper that is led by a female managing editor, Jane Hirt, who clearly should know better.
In 2010, when millions of girls and women are playing sports in this country and around the world, how is it acceptable for a newspaper to resort to tired old sexist comparisons of this sort, trying to diminish Pronger by saying he plays like a girl? Does not one editor of the Chicago Tribune have a daughter or granddaughter who is playing a sport?
Thanks to Nicole Bogdas for the tip.
Last year, the Chicago Tribune company made changes at its regional papers — referred to in-house as the “T6 papers” — to have certain pages and parts of pages — called “modules” — produced in Chicago. As you can imagine, this was a huge labor-saving device for the Tribune. Many designers, copy editors and other journalists lost their jobs as a result.
The papers affected: the Orlando Sentinel, the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant, the Allentown, Pa., Morning Call and the Daily Press of Newport News, Va.
Monday, the Tribune took the next step toward further consolidation, Chicago Tribune columnist Phil Rosenthal reports:
Since last spring, the Chicago Tribune has been sending edited, formatted and headlined nonlocal stories to smaller Tribune Co. newspapers, which could then drop them onto their pages. This new plan, set to begin Tuesday, involves editing, formatting and producing whole pages for the Daily Press, including, in some cases, editing and inserting local content…
“Instead of sending out individual building blocks that are assembled at the local site, we’re essentially going to build the framework into which they will fit local modules,” said Chicago Tribune Editor Gerould Kern, who has led the centralization efforts. The Daily Press, Kern said, asked for the latest “iteration on this model” to maintain local reporting yet lower costs.
Tuesday’s Daily Press front page.
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“This is a model that, particularly in smaller markets, although I can see it in larger markets as well, can change the economics of the newspaper business the same way Clear Channel changed the economics of … the radio business,” Digby Solomon, president and chief executive of the Daily Press, said by phone.
The comparison to Clear Channel isn’t surprising, given the background of Tribune managers. But the downside should be obvious, as well. The kind of homogenization brought forth by Clear Channel and its ilk is one reason I bought an iPod adapter for my car.
Make no mistake about it. This is not good news for journalism, print newspapers or for readers.
Find my story about the Tribune’s module system here.
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UPDATE
My old friend Phil Walzer of the Virginian-Pilot reports today:
The Daily Press in Newport News will eliminate most of its positions for copy editors and designers and move their functions to The Chicago Tribune, the newspaper’s publisher, Digby Solomon, said today.