City News Service RIP
Here's to the hardworking stiffs at City News Service (formerly City News Bureau) in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune is doing away with the service. The Trib bought what was then City News Bureau in 1999.
The bureau was where the real media grunts worked hard and long, with little pay, round-the-clock schedules and only begrudging recognition.
City News Bureau was where the likes of Mike Royko and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. got their starts. These were journalists' journalists. I knew a few of them and I respected all of them.
If news was breaking, you knew City News staffers would already be at the scene when you got there, no matter how cold and miserable or late or early. They saw some awful things. Vonnegut incorparated one of the things he saw -- somebody being crushed in an elevator, into one of his works.
Accuracy was paramount. The famous phrase from the City News Bureau in Chicago was, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
The closure comes because the Trib realized that the service, subscribed to as a tip service by nearly every media outlet in Chicago and some in the suburbs, was helping Trib competitors compete against its Web site.
Here's what one of the best-known City News Bureau veteran said about work there:
"We got to know the whole damn city and how to move around in it," Vonnegut said."It was something to be proud of -- like being in the infantry."
The bureau was where the real media grunts worked hard and long, with little pay, round-the-clock schedules and only begrudging recognition.
City News Bureau was where the likes of Mike Royko and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. got their starts. These were journalists' journalists. I knew a few of them and I respected all of them.
If news was breaking, you knew City News staffers would already be at the scene when you got there, no matter how cold and miserable or late or early. They saw some awful things. Vonnegut incorparated one of the things he saw -- somebody being crushed in an elevator, into one of his works.
Accuracy was paramount. The famous phrase from the City News Bureau in Chicago was, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
The closure comes because the Trib realized that the service, subscribed to as a tip service by nearly every media outlet in Chicago and some in the suburbs, was helping Trib competitors compete against its Web site.
Here's what one of the best-known City News Bureau veteran said about work there:
"We got to know the whole damn city and how to move around in it," Vonnegut said."It was something to be proud of -- like being in the infantry."
posted by Mountain Laureate at 8:43 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home