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Hot Type

By Michael Miner

A n AP story out ofWashington onDecember 6, 1941, that

began “If the Japanese everlaunch a sneak attack againstPearl Harbor, experts say it’s asitting duck” wouldn’t have beenplastered across the front pagesbecause no newspaper wouldhave accepted the premise. ASeptember 10, 2001, story warn-ing of hijacked planes used asmissiles would have gotten anequally cold reception.

Today it’s a given that 9/11 wasmerely the first assault and theenemy will come again, but sto-ries that sound an alarm still gobegging. This month the 9/11Commission did the work news-papers have refused to do andgave Washington a homeland-security report card full of Cs,Ds, and Fs. The story AP offeredpapers for December 6 began“Time, money and ever-presentterror threats have done little toclose gaping holes in the nation’ssecurity system, the former Sept.11 Commission said Monday.”The Sun-Times ran this story onpage 30, below a piece on TomDeLay and a story with theheadline “Are we ready formovies about 9/11?”

I don’t know why this per-formance astonished me. OnAugust 5 I wrote a column mar-veling that almost four yearsafter 9/11 American newspapersstill weren’t thinking seriouslyenough about homeland securi-ty. My exhibit A was a Sun-Times editorial touting the won-ders of Santiago Calatrava’s pro-

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posed 2,000-foot FordhamSpire. Build it, said the Sun-Times, to show we’re not “cav-ing in to the shallow threat ofterrorism.” Was putting the 9/11Commission’s report on page 30its way of showing us it stillrefused to cave?

The Sun-Times wasn’t theonly paper to misjudge thenews. The New York Timesput its version of theAP story on page22 of the nation-al edition onDecember 6,and plenty ofother papersdidn’t thinkthe storydeserved pageone. The Tribuneproperly topped itsfront page with the head-line “9/11 panel: U.S. not safe,”but it still fell short. TheTribune borrowed its story fromthe Washington Post, and therewas no sidebar covering theChicago angle—as if a reportgiving the government a D forcargo and luggage screening andan F for communicationbetween first responders didn’tsuggest one. Papers in othercities quoted former Illinois gov-ernor Jim Thompson, a memberof the panel, but on December 6the Chicago papers didn’t.

The Salt Lake Tribune was amodel of competent journalism.Its story ran on page one (withan editorial in the same edi-tion), and the local angle domi-nated. It identified Utah’s Orrin

hottype@chicagoreader.comwww.chicagoreader.com/hottype

Hatch as one of a “handful ofsenators” standing in the way ofa change in federal law thatwould allow homeland securityfunds to be distributed on thebasis of risk, instead of on thebasis of what commission chair-man Thomas Kean called “porkbarrel spending.”

This change obviously mattersto Chicago. The Sun-Times fig-ured that out in time to publishan editorial on December 7 thatwas longer than its news storythe day before. The editorial

denounced the “obstinacy ofCongress” and quoted Thompsonwondering, “What’s the ration-ale? What’s the excuse?”

The UnfilledHoleThe last vestige of Chicago’s hal-lowed City News Bureau disap-pears at the end of the year,when the Tribune pulls the plugon its New City News Service.

Burying the BombHomeland security failing, page 30

The Tribuneborrowed itsstory from the WashingtonPost, and therewas no sidebarcovering theChicago angle.

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The Straight Dope®by Cecil Adams

Itoo have an admission to make: I got a little help on this answer from theTeeming Millions via the Straight Dope Message Board. But come on,

it’s been a long year. You guys can carryme for once.

For reasons to be shortly elucidated,not the least of which is that travel bypost makes the most dimensionally chal-lenged coach seat look like Cleopatra’sbarge, mailing yourself is not somethingthat I can in good conscience advise. Butyes, it’s been done, occasionally in anoble cause, although more commonly instupid ones. Herewith the facts, noblecause first:

Escape from slavery. From the 1851memoir that bears his name we learn ofone Henry “Box” Brown, a slave residingin Richmond, Virginia, in the 1840s.Desperate for freedom, in March 1849Brown poured acid on his finger in orderto be excused from work; then, anticipat-ing Beavis and Butt-head by nearly 150years, he arranged for a pair of associ-ates to nail him inside a three-by-two-and-a-half-by-two-foot wooden box, hisonly accommodations a bladder of waterand a tool with which to bore additionalairholes. That done, the accomplicesdelivered the goods to the railwayexpress office, presumably paid thefreight, and wired a friend inPhiladelphia to await delivery of themale (Brown’s joke, not mine). The jour-ney was no walk in the shade. Despitethe fact that the box was marked THIS SIDE

UP WITH CARE, it was placed upside downfor hours at a time (freight handlersbeing no more attentive to instructionsthen than now), causing the blood torush dangerously to Brown’s head. Justas he felt about to lose consciousness,though, a couple jamokes turned the boxover, the better to sit on it. At anotherpoint the box was flung from a wagon,knocking Brown cold and nearly breakinghis neck. After some additional travailthe fugitive arrived at the desired

address in Philadelphia andwas uncrated. Heemerged andpromptlyfainted,bruisedand bat-tered but,thank Godalmighty,free at last.

Escape from New York. InSeptember 2003 Charles D.McKinley, 25, had himselfshipped by airfreight fromNew York to his parents’house in suburban Dallas, hisgoal not freedom but savingthe plane fare. This beingthe 21st century, McKinleytook along not water but acomputer and had himselfpicked up at a business in theBronx. The carrier, Kitty Hawk Cargo,flew the encrated man from Newark toBuffalo to Fort Wayne, Indiana, toDallas, whence he was transported bytruck to his folks’ house. He’d have got-ten there undetected except that at thelast minute he apparently removed acovering of some kind, allowing thedeliveryperson to see him while unload-ing the box. The jig up, the driver calledpolice, who arrested McKinley on someold warrants. A federal official concededthat U.S. air security measures clearlyweren’t the impenetrable shield onemight like in the wake of 9/11.

Escape from reality. In the kids’ bookFlat Stanley by Jeff Brown (1964), a bul-letin board falls on young StanleyLambchop and nonfatally flattens him tofour feet by one foot by half an inch. PopsLambchop takes advantage of this unfore-seen turn of events to mail Stanley toCalifornia for a visit. Stanley returns thesame way unscathed, proving “jet planeswere wonderful, and so was the PostalService.” It’s fiction, OK?

Practical considerations. As the above

suggests, the U.S. Postal Service is notthe carrier of choice for human freight,among other things having a 70-poundweight limit. Package delivery firms aremore liberal about such things (weightand dimensions, I mean; nobody is know-ingly going to take a living person); UPSwill ship up to 150 pounds. Air cargoservices generally speaking will takewhatever you can fit on a pallet—morethan that if you’re willing to pay for it.But there’s the rub. Take our friendCharles McKinley. Let’s suppose he wantsto try again and arranges to ship himselfvia UPS in a Henry Brown-size box with aloaded weight of 150 pounds (hey, he candiet). Cheapest rate from NYC to DFW:$152—but he’ll spend four days in transit.No way. Second-day air, still prettyuncomfortable: $345. Compare that tothe best deal for a conventional flight Icould find on Priceline: $126 for a one-stop via ATA, and you don’t even need toprovide your own box.

OK, before asking my question, I have to admit that I got the ideafor it from an episode of Beavis and Butt-head. Anyways, can I hopin a box, have a friend take me to the post office, and send myself tofar-off destinations? If I can, would it be cheaper than airfare? I’msure Beavis and Butt-head aren’t the first to think of this; hasanyone else tried it? —Arvind Karwan, Fort Collins, Colorado

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OComments, questions? Take it up with Cecil on the Straight Dope Message Board, www.straightdope.com, or write him at the Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611. Cecil’s most recent compendium of knowledge, Triumph of the Straight Dope, is available at bookstores everywhere.

The Tribune says it no longerwants to pay reporters to providecontent to TV and radio stationsthat put it online in competitionwith the Tribune’s own Web site.

When I wrote about New CityNews’s death sentence onDecember 9 I thought thechances were good that the holeit was leaving in Chicago jour-nalism would be filled by CityNews Service of Los Angeles. Iwas wrong. City News Serviceboss Doug Faigin tells me heran the numbers and decidedthe only way he could afford toset up shop here would be toincrease rates by about 50 per-cent. He rounded up 11 poten-tial clients—New City News hashad 14, City News Service wellover 100—but they balked atthe price. “Their [2006] budg-ets are pretty locked in,” he toldme. “It’s hard for them to comeup with the money. More thanone said they’d like us to contactthem again in late summer.”

At that point they’ll be writingtheir next budgets, and they’llhave a good idea how muchthey’ll need the package of localhard news and future eventsFaigin wants to sell them. “We’releaving this door open,” he said.

His business plan—which he’shanging on to—was to operate ata manageable loss for a couple ofyears while his operation demon-strated its competence, thenstart adding clients. Like maybethe Tribune, which he told medidn’t say yes but didn’t say no.And the Sun-Times, which saidno. And the Daily Herald, whichhe didn’t ask.

Permashuffle?Last August the Tribune told itscritics that while things were slowthe paper was going to shift a fewchairs around and see what hap-

pened. First-string theater criticMichael Phillips would reviewmovies for a couple months, sec-ond-stringer Chris Jones wouldhandle theater by himself, andfilm critic Michael Wilmingtonwould focus on Sunday essays. “Iwas told not to read anything intoit,” Wilmington told me at thetime, though of course every criticaffected by the job shuffle did.

Two months turned into four,and the lassitude of summer gaveway to the frenzy of Christmasopenings. But the new order stillstands. “Arts critic” Jones coverstheater. “Arts critic” Phillips cov-ers film—with a lot of help from“staff reporter” Allison Benedikt.“Movie critic” Wilmington han-dles art films and writes essays.

“We’re happy with the waythings are playing out on allfronts,” says James Warren,deputy managing editor for features. Though he stilldescribes the arrangement asan experiment, a return to theold status quo isn’t likely. Jonesand Phillips seem comfortablein their new assignments, andeven Wilmington, who got theshort end of the stick, is in a job that suits him better: he’s writing about ideas nowinstead of airheaded $200 million blockbusters.

Now That’s aTeam PlayerLast January 14 in these pagesScott Eden told the story of prepfootball guru Tom Lemming andthe kid he believed in,Libertyville High standoutSantino Panico. Panico was sodetermined to reach the NFL healready had his own personaltrainer, dietician, and speedcoach, yet none of the major foot-continued on page 6

5-6 and without a bowl invita-tion for the first time in 36 years,and if Panico wasn’t the reasonfor the disaster, in the fans’ eyeshe was a symbol. After the sea-son Callahan brought in one ofthe country’s top recruiting class-es, and Panico, reading the hand-writing on the wall, dropped outof the program and out of school.

But there’s more. During thatdismal season Panico happenedto have lunch one day with JohnCook, coach of the women’s vol-leyball team. “He was a realcharacter,” Cook recently toldLincoln Journal Star columnistJohn Mabry. “Anytime he was atthe training table, he was talking

6 CHICAGO READER | DECEMBER 30, 2005 | SECTION ONE

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about something.” That dayPanico was talking up a book heswore by, Gary Mack’s MindGym: An Athlete’s Guide toInner Excellence.

Cook checked it out and gavecopies to his players forChristmas. The book didn’thurt. Nebraska’s always strongin volleyball. This year’s teamwound up 33-2 and played forthe national championship.

News Bitesa The Reader’s Tori Marlanhas won an Alicia Pattersonfellowship and will spend

the next six months exploringthe lives of unaccompaniedminors seeking asylum in the U.S.

aLast week I reported thatJohn Lavine, the new dean ofthe Medill School ofJournalism, “comes out of ”Medill’s Integrated MarketingCommunications program.That’s wrong. Lavine is thefounding director of Medill’sMedia Management Center,which, to quote the Web site,“explores how to advance media strategy, marketing, cul-ture and sales force productivi-ty,” among other things. The

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ball schools wanted him.Miraculously, largely thanks toLemming, he wound up at foot-ball powerhouse Nebraska, play-ing for a new coach who’d arrivedtoo late to recruit anyone but left-overs. The coach, Bill Callahan,showed his appreciation forPanico’s sure hands by installinghim as Nebraska’s punt returner.

Panico didn’t fumble away apunt the entire 2004 season. Buthe didn’t run any back for bigyardage either. What scoutsother than Lemming had saidabout him was true: he didn’thave breakaway speed. Nebraskahad a horrible season, finishing

center’s concerns overlap with the IMC program’s, butMedill listed Lavine as a mem-ber of its “journalism,” not itsIMC, faculty. While he was with the Media ManagementCenter, Lavine played a key role in developing both the ill-fated Network Chicago mar-keting concept for Window tothe World Communications and RedEye for the Tribune.This record, coupled withLavine’s announced desire tomeld the journalism and IMCfaculties, helps explain the sense of unease I describedamong many Medill alumni and some faculty members. v

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