jeffmcmahon
05-14-2007, 09:59 AM
George Bova has an article on the front page of WSI ("Peeling the Onion of Sox Fandom") arguing that the White Sox need all of Chicago behind them, not just Bridgeporters in green caps. The Tribune certainly realizes that about its Cubbies. I know the mods here aren't crazy about media-bias talk, but the Tribune's latest maneuver is just too outrageous. Sox fans need to know about it, for the reasons George cites. Here's what the Tribune has been up to in the Spanish-language media when they thought we weren't looking:
Hoy, the Tribune-owned Spanish-language daily in Chicago, recently launched an ongoing full-page feature called "Conoce a tus Cubs" — Know Your Cubs. Hoy has no such feature for the White Sox.
"Conoce a tus Cubs" is an obvious effort to counter the White Sox's advantage among Latino fans — an advantage built in part upon a history of great Latino players like Luis Aparicio, Minnie Minoso, Jorge Orta, and Ozzie Guillen.
In its campaign to capture Latino Chicago, Tribune lets no journalistic principle stand in its way. It blurs the lines between journalism and advertising and between reporter and subject:
Above the headline of Thursday's story in the paper edition of Hoy — an interview with Cub Ronny Cedeño — appears the Cubs logo, the URL of the Cubs' Spanish-language webpage, and an ad for Chevy, framed in ivy. Yet the feature is no advertisement: Hoy promotes it with a front-page puff box, a practice reserved for editorial content.
If we do happen to pay a visit to LosCubs.com, we also find "Conoce a tus Cubs" featured there as an integral part of the Cubs website. (There's a graphic at www.cubune.com (http://www.cubune.com/2007/05/tribune-uses-hoy-to-promote-cubs-only.html) showing the same content in Hoy and at Cubs.com) Try to imagine the Tribune running parts of the White Sox website in their editorial space, packaging it as news. Hard to imagine? That's exactly what Tribune-owned Hoy is doing for the Tribune-owned Cubs, and to the exclusion of the White Sox.
I know some of you don't care about this media bias stuff, but it does matter: the two teams are competing for a finite number of fans, their budgets depend on that competition, and it's as wrong as wrong gets for a newspaper to use its editorial space to try to influence the market to its own advantage.
Hoy, the Tribune-owned Spanish-language daily in Chicago, recently launched an ongoing full-page feature called "Conoce a tus Cubs" — Know Your Cubs. Hoy has no such feature for the White Sox.
"Conoce a tus Cubs" is an obvious effort to counter the White Sox's advantage among Latino fans — an advantage built in part upon a history of great Latino players like Luis Aparicio, Minnie Minoso, Jorge Orta, and Ozzie Guillen.
In its campaign to capture Latino Chicago, Tribune lets no journalistic principle stand in its way. It blurs the lines between journalism and advertising and between reporter and subject:
Above the headline of Thursday's story in the paper edition of Hoy — an interview with Cub Ronny Cedeño — appears the Cubs logo, the URL of the Cubs' Spanish-language webpage, and an ad for Chevy, framed in ivy. Yet the feature is no advertisement: Hoy promotes it with a front-page puff box, a practice reserved for editorial content.
If we do happen to pay a visit to LosCubs.com, we also find "Conoce a tus Cubs" featured there as an integral part of the Cubs website. (There's a graphic at www.cubune.com (http://www.cubune.com/2007/05/tribune-uses-hoy-to-promote-cubs-only.html) showing the same content in Hoy and at Cubs.com) Try to imagine the Tribune running parts of the White Sox website in their editorial space, packaging it as news. Hard to imagine? That's exactly what Tribune-owned Hoy is doing for the Tribune-owned Cubs, and to the exclusion of the White Sox.
I know some of you don't care about this media bias stuff, but it does matter: the two teams are competing for a finite number of fans, their budgets depend on that competition, and it's as wrong as wrong gets for a newspaper to use its editorial space to try to influence the market to its own advantage.