The Times is rolling out a new two-page local-news section that will be inserted into its Chicago editions; the idea is to compete with the Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times for news and advertising. The paper is engaged in a similar effort in San Francisco.

Despite its manifest troubles, the Times is in a pretty good position to compete with the Tribune in Chicago, largely because the Tribune is as dull as a sack full of wet newsprint and suffers locally from a well-earned reputation for stuffy, censorious parochialism. The Times has always had a very good foothold in Chicago because there is no local alternative for the sort of people who read the Times—curious, smart, and not invested in Chicago's bottomless Second City status anxiety. The Tribune, on the other hand, is pitched directly at suburban blue-haired ladies who are given to write angry letters to the paper, and the definition of a successful editorial initiative at the Trib is one that does not generate angry letters from blue-haired suburban ladies.

But the Times isn't actually getting into the local news business in Chicago itself; instead, it is outsourcing the coverage to something called the Chicago News Cooperative, a newly formed non-profit designed to "provide high quality, professionally edited news and commentary to the Chicago region on the Web, in print and over the airwaves," according to a news release announcing its formation. So who's heading up CNC? Why, James O'Shea, the Tribune's former managing editor. On its board is Ann Marie Lipinski, the Trib's former top editor and O'Shea's former boss. And writing a column for CNC's "branded content" in the Times will be former managing editor for features Jim Warren. In other words, the Times is taking a whack at the Trib by hiring the people whose complacency and abject failure to create a newspaper worth reading made the Trib vulnerable to a whack-taking in the first place.

Your blogger knows something about that complacency because I labored under Lipinski, O'Shea, and Warren's "professional editing" at the Tribune for several years, as did my wife. The entire organization was seized by their collective panic at lowering revenues, plummeting readership (I quite literally never met a Tribune subscriber socially during my five years in Chicago), and frequently aborted frantic attempts to do something—hastily convened committees to launch new sections produced prototypes that languished for months and months in sad little piles around the newsroom as reminders of the paper's institutional paralysis. Meanwhile, there were days when the front page consisted almost entirely of wire copy, when editors picked up two-week-old Los Angeles Times stories to fill out sections, and when Lipinski reacted to the appearance of a bad word—actually, a cheeky, punny reference to a bad word in a headline—by dragging editors to the printing plant after hours and forcing them to physically remove the offending section from the next day's bundled editions.

And then there was the night that, after filing a story on Dan Rather, I went home to see if it had gotten any blog pick-up. I Googled for it, only to discover that it hadn't yet been posted on the Tribune's web site. But it had made it to the site of the Kansas City Star, which subscribed to the Tribune's wires. Lipinski and O'Shea's paper, in the nation's third-largest market, didn't get the story up until the next morning, because the web folks had gone home. But Kansas City's daily managed to get it out there for them.

Anyway, those are the folks who will be, in O'Shea's words, "adapt[ing] to new technologies and devis[ing] some creative, innovative ways to fulfill our obligations" as journalists. They certainly didn't get it right the first time; we wish them luck in this circle-back attempt.

This kind of stuff cannot possibly look attractive to your theoretical disinterested observer, or "independent voter," to be literally cheering the fact that an American city—a Midwestern American city!—has lost something to a foreign city. This is like rooting for Obama's puppy to get run over. This is like if Obama said "My fellow Americans, it would be cool to see Drew Brees break the single-season passing yardage record this year" and then Michele Malkin went on the TV to pray for Bart Scott to break his leg this Sunday. (That's right, Malkin, I just compared you to a Jets fan.)

So hey, if you guys want to look like the most craven bunch of inconsistent assholes imaginable, that is your business! It does not hurt us any, for you jokers to go around shitting on America. But Politico, please, please, please stop trying to craft this "massive embarrassing Obama failure" thing into conventional wisdom. Please.

Obama never bothered to do anything about the Olympic bid until a week ago and the selection is entirely about the internal politics of the corrupt IOC—it has literally nothing to do with our own domestic politics, except that a bunch of assholes got all nutty about it, which is not news anymore.

This means the various poorly dressed and oddly coiffed young terrorist hep cats who burned the Olympic banner on the streets of the Windy City have won. Presumably they are right now pausing the Crass albums on their "Disc Mans" just long enough to cheer the failure of America. And they will be joined in that cheer by Matt Drudge!

"WORLD REJECTS OBAMA," Drudge says! That is a hilarious and easily predicted distortion! Also wasn't it weird how suddenly the right-wing hated the idea of a President trying to get America the Olympics? Like, seriously, what the fuck was that about?

Some of us were against having the Olympics in America because the IOC is run by vile old bastards, the bidding process is staggeringly corrupt, and Chicagoans, like New Yorkers, did not particularly want the Olympics, all that much. We did not want the IOC to reject our bid because Chicago has too many black criminals and because the idea of Obama trying to boost an American city enrages us, though. Why does Matt Drudge hate America? (Note: Chicago is part of America!)

Here we have the forces of American Exceptionalism and unrepentant jingoism teaming up with dreadlocked anti-American anarchists. Maybe the Spanish fascist who used to run the IOC will win the Olympics for Madrid, or (most likely) they will go to Rio de Janeiro.

First, here's what happened: Albert was leaving his high school last Thursday when two rival gangs — one called "The Ville" for their neighborhood — approached the area, all macho and shit. Two guys from the nameless gang attacked Albert with a wooden railroad plank, called a tie, and then, for some reason, five guys from the rival gang got in on the action. One man, 19-year-old Silvanus Shannon, admitted that he stomped — fucking stomped — on this poor kid's head. It's all very disturbing. (I watched it, for this post, and really wish I hadn't. There's an audible crack of Albert's skull. Here's a link, although I don't recommend it.)

This being the 21st century, a bystander video taped the whole thing and then gave it to Albert's family, the police and a local Fox channel. Because that's what you do with sensational video, you give it to the media, which will have a field day with the brutal details. It all sounds so familiar, but perhaps this case will be a bit different.

Yes, videotaped beatings have become common place. Just earlier this month there was that video of a white teen getting beaten on the school bus by teens some described as a bunch of black racists. (And Obama wants kids to spend more time in school? As if.) Albert's case differs, though, because this is a death, not some talking point.

This is a video of someone losing their life. Poof. It's gone. And there are dozens of people cheering on the action. If you don't believe in Kitty Genovese — girl stabbed on the street, disputed newspaper stories say no one helped, social scientists had a field day — maybe you should now. People are watching the attack and then we're watching them watch.

But could it be that people should watch this? Should this become standard viewing so that everyday folk understand man's appallingly violent underbelly? Or maybe we've all become too aware and can no longer be bothered to feel the weight of that unsettling realization. Would it be naive to hope that's not the case?

As for the camerawoman herself: we're torn between finding her a bit culpable (at one point she says "get closer") and being thankful her morbid, but very human, fascination with violence and technological prowess got the (alleged) attackers on tape. That's some 21st century justice right there.

The ads were poetic ditties of white text on a black background. Like: "Blind girls never see you coming" and "Strippers Will Not Tolerate Disrespect (Just Kidding)."

But: Max, who seems to necessitate creative new suffixes being appended to words like "douche" on a daily basis—mostly by his fans—had his ads thankfully removed by Chicago's Transit Boards in a transit-based struggle that would make Rosa Parks want to rise from the dead to beat the piss out of Max for messing with her legacy of transit-based struggle.

Max responded in a release maturely and appropriately, handling the situation with the decorum and class we've come to expect from him: "Blow me," he wrote. Max was quoted as saying it was "the culmination of a two-month-long effort by angry anti-male groups." Also, this:

"...Women are not stupid. They would not support me if I hated them, and the fact that they come out in the hundreds of thousands to buy my book and go to my movie is proof that I not only love women, but my art is in fact pro-woman."

At first glance, less egregious is Tucker's intentionally inflammatory statement that his "art" is pro-women as it is as it is "art." But then, it all begins to make sense: this is performance art. Max's entire shtick is performance art. It's New Museum-level shit. In fact, Max probably knows exactly what he's doing, how people are going to react to it, and the exact amount of publicity it's going to generate. Which is why it's strange that, you know, he made such a shitty movie that nobody's going to want to see, and thus, make no money. So what would tie this all together?

The forthcoming revelation that Max is just a deeply-closeted homosexual, inching his way out by purporting the extremities of the most straight, blase, boring, stupid, and utterly predictable proto-male sexuality there is: his, or his act's. The kind given the treatment a "salon" of fellow "bros" out there could appreciate in the form of a book and its poop-like adaptation. Tucker Max could be the world's most interesting gay advocate out there if this thing comes full-circle.

Then again, he's probably just a dick. City of Chicago: good on you.

Perhaps, for a former fundraiser for disgraced Governor and media whore Blagojevich, Christopher Kelly, has left this world, the apparent victim of what cops say could be a self-administered overdose. That seems to be a tragedy. But is it?

Kelly, who refused to rat out his pal Blago, was brought to the hospital on Friday and told cops that he had overdosed on drugs, although the officer who took that statement later said he couldn't confirm such a report. Fair enough, but that does nothing to quiet murmurs about known gambling addict Kelly's death. This guy, who was pronounced dead on Saturday, had loads to lose, and not only over his devotion to Blagojevich:

...At the time of his death, Kelly had run up thousands of dollars in personal debts was believed to be strapped for cash.

He was facing three years in prison for hiding $1.3 million in income, including company money he used to pay gambling debts that he wrote off as business expenses. He was facing five additional years for taking part in an $8.5 million fraud involving roofing work on United Air Lines and American Airlines hangars at O'Hare International Airport.

Of course, considering Kelly's relationship with old Blago, some are wondering whether the investigation led to Kelly's so-called suicide.

Carol Marin, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, has been following Kelly's problems for some time now, and thinks that all the hub-bub over his "misdeeds" may have led him to end his life in a spectacular, drug-induced manner. She also assumes he was guilty of his crimes.

That may be so, but aren't such questions overlooking the real question: should we be troubled by Kelly's death? Sure, on a human, sympathetic level, we should at least empathize with a man whose personal woes led to his downfall. On the other hand, this man clearly had some shit to work out. And, considering the investigations, we would put money on the fact that something wasn't quite right.

Still, there's something troubling here. Humans are fallible, sure. We get that. But could it be that the alluring prospect of personal gain in the political realm, something greater than one man's life, led to this? There are shades of Vince Foster in all of this.

We won't go so far to say there was a conspiracy, because that would be downright melodramatic, but this man, however corrupt, was seduced by a system that he thought he could win. He obviously lost.

But, in the end, politics is a game. And, as disturbing as this personal tragedy may be, Mr. Kelly's downfall is, sadly, only one more drop in the bucket. So, kids, still want to be president?

According to the LA Times, the perpetrator is a 20-year-old University of Chicago Illinois student named Firas Alkhateeb who made the image during his winter break from school using PhotoShop, naturally:

Alkhateeb had been tinkering with the program to improve the looks of photos he had taken on his clunky Kodak camera. The Joker project was his grandest undertaking yet. Using a tutorial he'd found online about how to "Jokerize" portraits, he downloaded the October 23 Time Magazine cover of Obama and began digitally painting over it.

Four or five hours later, he happily had his product.

Alkhateeb says that he then posted the image to his Flickr page where it sat largely unnoticed for a couple of months. Then an unknown individual found the photo, removed all of the references to Time, added the word "socialism" across the bottom of the image and posted it all over the streets of Los Angeles. The original image was found on Alkhateeb's Flickr by the LA Times after they were tipped off to it by a reader, but he closed the account after they contacted him because he wanted to "lay low" in the "very, very liberal" city from which Barack Obama's political career was sprung.

"After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," Alkhateeb said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him."

"I abstained from voting in November," he wrote in an e-mail. "Living in Illinois, my vote means close to nothing as there was no chance Obama would not win the state." If he had to choose a politician to support, Alkhateeb said, it would be Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

So yeah, good luck wrapping your brain around this one.

The job market has gotten so bad that even unpaid internships with no hope of advancement into an actual job and no actual duties and no chair are the hottest commodities on the market. The Brooklyn DA's office pulled almost 200 interns this summer—180 of whom were probably heartbroken that corporate offices are now using their actual attorneys as interns—and many of them are only valued as ringers on the office softball team. The rest of the time, they lean against the wall, like so many vagrants.

Are these the kids who will support the $5-per-slice Brooklyn pizza industry? Hardly. These kids couldn't even afford a condo in San Diego—now cheaper than a Brooklyn pizza!

So what are we actually "training" these fledgling ambulance-chasers for, really? We're training their calf muscles for their upcoming career as $10/ hr. line-standers, buying tickets for rich people at the 2016 Olympics in Chicago, where the mayor laid off 400 city workers on the same day he pressed for the city to get the games, which will cost $3.3 billion. By the time they roll around, Chicago will be a city of hobos, overrun by out-of-town hobos streaming in for the Hobolympics. Perfect.

In the meantime, I can offer an exciting unpaid "internship" to anyone who cares to fetch me lunch daily! Email me!
[Pic via]

The Chi-Town Daily News reported on a developer who tore down a Victorian home built in the 1890s, who's now a little too cash-strapped to carry on with building the nice condos he planned on putting there. Nice story, right?

But the kicker comes at the bottom:

Yes, they note that they're a "501(c)(3) public charity" that "depend on contributions from readers like you to train volunteer neighborhood reporters and produce Chicago's best independent local news coverage." Non-profits: the new New Media Profit Model! Considering the profitability of most other news outlets, it looks like the Chi-Town Daily News is way ahead of its time. They could also just lease out their offices to shoot movies. Then again, they probably don't have any. Cost-cutting efficiency, too!

Condo project in question amid financial concerns [Chi-Town Daily News]

Previously: Slave Labor: The New, New-Media Profit Model

Gawker spent $14 to reporting, writing, and editing this item. We need your help to continue keeping our writer fueled with nicotine, caffine, and the occasional prescription amphetamine. Please consider donating.

Basically the designers had to make the glass five layers thick, using various new polymers and whatnot to ensure that the whole structure wouldn't crumble and send people plummeting to their dooms. The firm that built The Ledge and another group, who made big inroads in the glass architecture field by building all of the glass stairs that bedeck Apple stores across the nation, both have an end goal for all this alchemy: "Ultimately what we're all striving for is an all-glass structure." Sounds like fun! But, um, count us out.

Image via Getty

[Note: Results are from 1592 total votes in two polls; we started a new poll after we added Miami and New Orleans to the list. This placed Miami and New Orleans at a disadvantage, so they can claim moral victory. Although they wouldn't have won anyhow. Results rounded to nearest percentage point.]


New York: 32%
Chicago: 16%
Washington, DC: 16%
Detroit: 9%
Los Angeles: 6%
New Orleans: 6%
San Francisco: 5%
Boston: 5%
Las Vegas: 2%
Miami: 3%

New York: Wall Street. Fashion. The media capital of the world. Billionaires. Criminals. Mafiosos. Immigrants. Everything's grand!

Los Angeles: Hollywood. Movie stars. Celebrities. Parties. Drugs. Bloods. Crips. Speidi. Beaches. Hippies. Weed. Glamor!

Las Vegas: Casinos. The Mob. The Rich. The strung out. Hookers. Pimps. Steve Wynn. Luck!

Washington, DC: Politics. Presidents. Senators. Crack. Marion Barry. The Supreme Court. Museums. Landmarks. Legislation. Sex scandals. Obama!

San Francisco: The Castro. Barry Bonds. Gavin Newsom. Tech. Silicon Valley. The Gays!

Boston: Patriots. Celtics. Red Sox. Championships. Tradition. Massholes. Ivy League. M.I.T. Kennedys!

Chicago: Machine politics. Daley. Throwback Obama. Projects. Vice Lords. Second City. Jordanesque!

Detroit: GM. Eminem. Unemployment. Poverty. Decay. The perfect crumbling urban hellhole for an enterprising metro reporter to use as a canvas. Charlie LeDuff!

New Orleans: Katrina. Destruction. Resurrection. Cafe Du Monde. Mardi Gras. Hurricanes, alcoholic and otherwise. Brangelina. Master P. Ninth Ward!

Miami: Vice. Cocaine cowboys. South Beach. Cubans. Jamaicans. Retirees. Cigarette boats. Money. Mosquitoes. Storms. Carl Hiaasen. Dave Barry. America's landing strip!

He is just nuts, this one! The show is not a light-hearted romp, or gently mocking tribute. It is basically a reenactment of the various scummy things listed in the criminal complaint against the former Illinois governor, "making ample use of tape." The Tribune's theater critic describes the surreal scene:

Blagojevich only showed up at the start of the Navy Pier show (above), and in the improv set at the end. But he still found time to recite a portion of the St. Crispin's Day speech from "Henry V," shill for his wife's reality TV show set in the jungles of Costa Rica ("If you can vote for her, please do"), invite the cast of this "fictional show" to dinner ("we'll be serving tarantulas"), indict the "football" hairbrush used in the Navy Pier show as "too small," and get off a few gags.

What a weird, weird guy.

[Via Wonkette]

From around 6AM Saturday to 6AM Sunday, seven deaths. All of the shootings that took place last night spanned the city. Something like this happened last year. Most of them are being looked at as gang related, with exception to a few.

The shootings, in no particular order: A grocery store owner was found fatally shot yesterday morning in the back of his store on the North Side. A drive-by on the Near West Side that killed one. Three brothers, one fatally shot in a drive-by on the South Side. Three men shot, two fatally after a verbal spat on the West Side. A 26 year-old fatally shot in a drive-by on the Southwest Side. A 28 year-old fatally shot on the Southeast Side, sitting outside his home.

Elsewhere, Thursday night, five were shot in a drive-by on the South Side, including a 15 year-old kid, Friday evening, a guy who hijacked an empty school bus with one other employee aboard was killed at the end of the confrontation by police, and this morning, a 46 year-old man at a grocery store on the South Side was leaving with his groceries when he - as the story goes - pulled out a gun and aimed it at the store's security guard. After a struggle, the guard managed to shoot his assailant in the leg twice; the assailant's now in stable condition. "Police said the man may be homeless and credited the guard," notes the story, but there's something strange about a homeless guy being able to produce a gun. Possible, but doesn't seem likely. Finally, a 65 year-old man killed himself after a long standoff with police.

What's going on in Chicago that's causing all the violence this weekend? Totally rampant speculation: probably some unconnected extreme instances, and gang violence heating up (as it tends to do in the summer, when younger members are less likely to be in school). It can't help that their cops - like so many other large cities - have a reputation for being crooked. But Chicago's? In the last week, a Fire and Police City Council chair being brought up on corruption charges, in addition to a cop being indicted with a mob boss.

The only story on the wires about this is a small AP piece noting the number of shootings of the last night. Not to suggest some kind of vast, far-reaching, Salinger-backpocketing media conspiracy, but it's going to be interesting to see how these types of things are treated over the next few months in the Chicago and national media with the city's Olympic bid decision coming up in four months. Could just be a random string of shootings. It could be a pattern of American Violence that simply goes unnoticed until it comes up in number clusters like this. Whatever it is, it's really, really terrible for all of us. And a kick-you-when-you're-down item I had nowhere else to put: a Chicago petting zoo burned down Thursday, killing 75% of the animals in it. So maybe Chicago's just having one of those terribly unforgiving weeks. Probably not, though.

Bill Ayers and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who have nothing in common besides a lack of restraint, self-awareness, and connections to Barack Obama that they both wielded as weapons when he refused to endorse every aspect of their world-views and ideologies, pretended it was still 2008 and that anyone but Sarah Palin cared about them anymore and joined together to lead a march on behalf of the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine.

While it would've been nice if maybe people with some vague connection to the peace process had led the march, these jokers did manage to get some headlines, so good work, Committee. Really helped your credibility, there.

Meanwhile Obama and Netanyahu will agree on precisely nothing, at all, because one is a pragmatist and the other wants us to nuke Iran.

Jackson is not actually in any legal trouble, because he didn't actually do anything, but according to taped conversations, corrupt former Illinois governor Blago seemed to think he might end up with a pretty decent payday if he appointed Jackson to the Senate to replace Barack Obama.

Blago told his brother to get in touch with Raghuveer Nayak, a friend of and fundraiser for Jackson, and try to sell Nayak on giving Blago "tangible political support" in exchange for the Jackson appointment. Now Blago didn't actually seem to want to appoint Jackson, 'cause Jackson had not really been his best political ally, but it still seemed worth a shot to approach Jackson's rich friends. And then there was this fundraiser Jackson and his brother and Nayak went to, a couple weeks before Blago's arrest, but honestly who knows what was actually going on out there, in Chicago, with the favor-trading.

Now the "Office of Congressional Ethics" is a toothless citizens' board sort of thing that was just formed last year, and all they can really do is ask politely for interviews and documents and then recommend that the for-real Ethics Committee look into something, but still: you don't really want to be the only member of the Illinois congressional delegation not named "Roland Burris" to be under investigation by any group with "ethics" in the name.

Hah, yes, hooray—details from a federal indictment released Thursday tell the proud story of "Congressman A," our own Rahm Emanuel, and how Blago tried to block money meant for a school in Rahm's district. Then Blago told Rahm, Rahm, he said, you know what would be really super nice? If your brother Ari got some celebrities to throw a fundraiser for me!

Rahm's brother Ari is, of course, a famous agent, and he is played by famous poisoned actor Jeremy Piven on a tv show, so obviously he knows lots of famous people.

Prosecutors said a fundraiser was never held. The aide would not say whether Emanuel ever actually learned of the request.

Hah. No, of course not. We're guessing Rahm did know of the request, and we're guessing he ignored it, because it was probably best to just ignore the crazy things Governor Blago said.

Of course this is proof that Rahm Emanuel is corrupt and probably guilty of CRIMES, according to The Corner.

Accused of trying to sell the vacant Senate seat of Barack Obama to the highest bidder, Blagojevich got caught before he sealed the deal. Some accuse prosecutors of rushing to nail him before he'd actually taken a bribe, rather than just artfully suggesting he might be open to the idea. The indictment also accuses him of a "wide-ranging scheme to deprive the people of Illinois of honest government" — which seems like a moot point now that he's got little more to do than vacation at theme parks. This is an anticlimactic end to his sorry political career; the indictment and subsequent trial are a small postscript.

No wonder that Blagojevich is out of town. There's no spotlight to be hogged, no cameras in his face, no microphones waiting to capture his latest recitation of lines of Kipling. He managed to get a book deal. By the time it comes out, will anyone remember anything besides his funny name and funnier mane?