Requiem

By John Kass | Wednesday December 17, 2025

The other day R. Bruce Dold, the great Pulitzer Prize winning editor of the Chicago Tribune, died.

And our friend Cory Franklin wrote a beautiful column about Bruce.

At the church there were many people there, people I knew, former colleagues at the Tribune who loved and respected Bruce.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were not there for Bruce alone, but that we also were mourning journalism itself.

At least Chicago journalism, the Chicago newspapers.

I’m not trying to redo Dr. Franklin’s great work about Bruce, but I did add an editor’s note explaining that while he might have come to us from New Jersey, he was all Chicago, because he understood our tribal ways:

He was a good editor and a better man. Though he was from New Jersey, Bruce was Chicago all the way. When Eleanor ‘Sis’ Daley died, Bruce knocked on my office door. “We’re going to the wake.” I didn’t want to go. Why? I’d feuded bitterly with her son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, and I didn’t think it would be proper to go. “We’re going, you and me, we’re going now,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.” He was right. It was the Chicago thing to do. You go to the wake. If you don’t know that, you don’t know Chicago. And R. Bruce Dold knew Chicago.

He loved what the Tribune meant to Chicago. What made him a great writer: he was curious about people, about the city’s politics, and tribes and institutions. And he loved the Chicago Tribune. Unfortunately, after all those years, the Tribune didn’t love him back.

One reader, friend and Tribune colleague Melody Potempa picked up on the line that he loved the Tribune, but that the Tribune didn’t love him back. Under the Franklin column she wrote this:

“Beautifully written by Dr. Franklin. I didn’t know Bruce except in passing or if the Ed Board needed something from Edit Admin. Always a gentleman. Most sad to read that he passed away.

“And John is right. By the time we moved from Tribune Tower to Prudential, and things were heating up with the Writers Guild, some of what I witnessed in the newsroom prior to Bruce’s retirement was uncalled for” wrote Potempa.

She closed with this:

“RIP 🙏🏻”

I texted Cory after the service—Betty and I had to leave early because I had a deadline for another column on the giant Minnesota fraud.

“It was like attending a funeral for journalism itself,” I wrote.

“I thought the same thing,” Franklin responded.

Brian Anderson in City Journal, wrote a piece about the future of journalism.

“Three decades ago,” Anderson writes, “the visionary social thinker Peter Huber published Orwell’s Revenge, a book that turned one of the twentieth century’s most haunting political parables on its head. Where George Orwell imagined a future of total information control, Huber saw the opposite: a world where digital technology shattered centralized authority. In 1984, the Ministry of Truth could rewrite history because it monopolized the tools of communication. But in the digital age, Huber argued, the networked computer would scatter those tools across society, producing an unruly democracy of voices.

“The Internet, he predicted, would not empower “Big Brother” but millions of “little brothers”—individuals able to report and argue and publish. What once seemed a one-way flow of information from elite institutions to a passive public was becoming a many-to-many conversation. The gatekeepers were being evicted by the code.

“This technological revolution would have profound cultural consequences. As Huber memorably put it, “Better communicating machines produce more—not less—communication, more—not less—free expression, more—not less—political involvement, more—not less—freedom of thought.”

“The people who controlled legacy newsrooms—highly educated and overwhelmingly left-leaning—had long exercised a disproportionate power to define what counted as respectable opinion. When those gatekeepers lost influence, new kinds of voices surged through. In a book published in 2005, I described the early energies of this revolt, chronicling how talk radio, cable news, and the early Internet—all unleashed by the mutations in communications technology—disrupted liberal cultural authority. Right-of-center ideas and perspectives suddenly found much wider distribution.

“The fall of the old gatekeepers also demolished journalism’s economic foundations. The media theorist Andrey Mir calls this the rise of “post-journalism”—the era in which the traditional advertising model collapsed, taking with it the profession’s claim to disinterestedness. When Internet platforms absorbed ad revenue and fragmented audiences, news outlets, to survive—and many didn’t, with more than a third of newspapers disappearing since 2005—began seeking income directly from readers. Subscriptions and ideological loyalty replaced mass advertising. Journalism learned to sell not information but identity.

“News increasingly became a performance of belonging; in Mir’s phrase, the newsroom turned from a public square into a political theater.”

It’s all changed now. Everything. The media landscape was so lush. A newspaper was a license to print money.  Now it’s an arid, hostile place where thirsty wasps buzz for moisture from your lips, your eyes. Anderson notes that platforms like Substack and X allow writers to reach readers directly, often unmediated by legacy brands. My favorite is my own website, JohnKassNews.com where I have full control.  Subscribe for a  year, and pour yourself a good cup of Midwestern common sense.

“Elon Musk’s reengineering of Twitter into X has supercharged this shift,” Anderson writes in City Journal, “transforming it into one of the most influential arenas for news and commentary in the world. But Substack is no slouch: it reported in 2024 that it had over 35 million monthly readers and 3 million paying subscribers, dramatic proof of the journalist-as-entrepreneur shift.”

In that church at Bruce Dold’s memorial, I didn’t hear the bells tolling for journalism. I didn’t need to hear them. Thanks to the hard left, Chicago journalism is dead. Funeral bells would have been unnecessary.

But Anderson’s comment about dramatic proof of the journalist-as-entrepreneur? I think that’s me. I’m one of those journalist “entrepreneurs.” I write for a living but will never go back to corporate legacy journalism. Never.

A while back I was in Jimmy Banakis’ old restaurant and some of his customers came up to our the table. They were loyal Tribune readers, solid newspaper readers. We talked about Jimmy’s famous Spicy Shrimp and Grits. And about the news, including the absolute stupidity of the moron mayor Johnson. They loved what I did, what we did, and they wanted to be a part of it. I got up to talk to them, and I told them some stories about JohnKassNews.

“I love that you’re selling,” said Jimmy. “You’re peddling your wares. I love it.”

I love it, too. But I don’t have much choice. I’m not rich. I write my stories and sell them to pay my bills. In this, I felt much as the old immigrants to Chicago must have felt, those old-time Jews or Greeks or Italians, joking with the neighborhood housewives about the size of the cucumbers from the back of the vegetable cart, and the sweetness of the blackberries. All I need is a sturdy mule to pull the wagon, holes in a battered fedora for the ear, as my grandfather Papou Yianni used on the streets of Chicago when he was a peddler.

But I got the real truth of the future in a small digital ad from my former paper, as I tried to read a Chicago Bears story for free. The ad telling me that I could get a year’s subscription for only $1. I wouldn’t spend the money for the newspaper that we loved, the one that stabbed me and Dold in the back. Not even 100 pennies.

Only one dollar for the Chicago Tribune?

That tells you all you need to know, doesn’t it?

 

 

(Copyright 2025 John Kass)

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

Merchandise Now Available: If you’re looking for a gift for that hard-to-buy for special someone who has everything, just click on the link to the johnkassnews.com store.

Where else would you find a No Chumbolone™ cap or a Chicago Way™ coffee cup?

Because I know this about you: You’re not a Chumbolone.

Comments 59

  1. Says it all John. When I was a kid in Roseland (long, long time ago) I delivered the Trib, and dreaded Sunday for its shear volume and weight. All of my family subscribed because it WAS a great paper. Now, it’s just a Lefty rag celebrating Fat Boy and BJ like they were gods.
    What a shame, what a waste.

    1. Thanks Larry, many, many years ago in my youth, my friends and I would collect and bundle old newspapers to sell at their scrape value Like you said, the newspapers back then had some weight to them especially the Sunday Trib, I can still picture the mounds of paper print stacked 0ur garage waiting to be cashed in. It would now take a lifetime of collecting this paper treasure to get even a buck in exchange for the flimsy rag, not even fit for collecting dog doo doo.

    1. Thanks as well John for your much needed fair and broad-minded insights and reporting. Interesting that the “trib” is offering subscriptions for a $1.00 and that’s deemed over-priced by many former subscribers like myself. If that isn’t the definition of “irony” I don’t know what is!

      1. Maybe if the Tribune hadn’t have chased all the conservatives out they could get $50 instead of $1.
        Read the Trib for my entire life until John and others left.

  3. Newspapers are going out not with a bang, but a whimper.

    You nailed it again, Mr. Kass. As a kid I remember my dad going out to get the early Sunday editions of the Times, Trib, and Daily News on Saturday evenings because the papers were so huge. It took until Monday or Tuesday to get through them all.

    In grade school I remember the school field trips downtown where we saw the Times on the printing press, then to the Tribune building to see the rocks from all over the world embedded in the outside wall.

    At Oak Lawn High School, I wrote for my school newspaper, The Spartanite, and seriously thought about going into journalism as a career. Life happened and put me on a different path, but I retained my love of papers into adulthood. Sundays were still spent leisurely combing through the Times and Trib until the Internet age took hold.

    Like most of the world, I don’t do print media anymore. Screens are the primary source for news, but just like papers, one must be very discerning about what is truth and what is fabricated or AI generated. Like the famous Chicago newspaper man once said, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

    To borrow Linda Ellerbee’s closing line, “and so it goes…”

  4. I think I pay $4.95 for 6 months and I do it just to read Biggsy. But then when I scan the headlines of their onesidedness and I see lefty Clarence writing the only official editorial , I feel sticky doing so.

    2. I’ve bailed on Biggsy, Michael, now mooching his radio appearances on Audacy/WSCR…. And the late great Gil Thorp… Oh, and the obits!! All gone after decades of faithful daily Trib reading…. I had a route from Lake to Madison just west of Austin and read the paper while walking up Humphrey learning how to throw papers to porches of four squares and 3rd floor apartments. My first read every morning was Moon Mullins and then David Condon. My old man, a photoengraver for both papers, had the Trib mailed to me up at the farm every summer. I took the CNW/Metra to and from Kedzie Avenue for 35 years, peddling envelopes. Erv Wejs, an old time Chicago guy traded his Sun-Times for my Trib and we had the news of the city covered every morning. I remember 7 cents and a dime and a quarter for the papers and all their news, the Goldblatt’s ads and CLASSIFIEDS!! All available for pennies….. and now, even just a few bucks from our pockets to their coffers IS sticky…. And, Mr. Banakis, even a buck seems like they’re tricking me just to count me in amongst their crowd….. We are all SO fortunate for Kass and these damned near daily missives; cogent and timely and engaging…..John Kass, thanks for your columns, Mr. Rucinski’s (and others!) responses and my own silly access.

      1. Tom Hansen,

        This is the first time I have ever posted a comment anywhere.
        When I saw your comment about the obits in the (paper) I wanted to let you know I read them every morning on line. Just go to their website and look for the obit headline.
        Just wanted to let you know I get them free of charge. I wouldn’t pay a buck either.

  5. Thanks John.

    Sadly, many of those that call themselves journalists are just brain washed minions of the progressive left academia. At some point when everything civil breaks down here, these pukes, and many of the patronage army pukes as well will be wondering what happened.

    The constant regurgitation of lies by these people is a huge factor in the death spiral of Chicago, Illinois and later America. If we lose freedom here, where do we go?

    So if you are a new(er) journalist and somehow find yourself reading this column, wake the fork up and learn to investigate for the truth.
    RIP Bruce
    Stay well John

    God bless America.

  6. Thank you for writing! I look forward to your columns. I’m a monthly subscriber but will try to convert to a yearly. This column was especially insightful. May your dear friend and colleague rest in peace. I’ll have a Mass said for the repose of his soul. God bless you, John. Enjoy the beautiful Christmas season…as we say in our family…it’s a long and beautiful season.

  9. We canceled our subscription when the Tribune canceled you. They continued to email it free for two years, by then all that was worth reading was 1/2 the comics and the obits. After two years they offered it for $1, it wasn’t worth it, we are much happier reading John Kass on line. Thank you for what you do and Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year to you and yours.

  10. John, I want you to check out paragraph.xyz. It’s an attempt to make journalism great again, but by using blockchain and crypto. It is EARLY days on it. Here is the VC’s post on how it works: https://blog.usv.com/doubling-down-on-onchain-publishing-with-paragraph
    “The vision of “onchain publishing” is to rebuild content creation, distribution, and monetization on web3 rails.

    This allows creators to truly own their content as digital assets: onchain posts and media are owned directly by web3 identities (e.g., accounts on Ethereum or other blockchains), and in the case of Paragraph and Mirror, content is stored publicly and permanently in Arweave.

    Onchain publishing also unlocks powerful new engagement and revenue models: for example, minting posts as NFTs, rewarding subscribers with tokens, enabling perpetual royalties, and tipping creators.”

    I am sure there is eye rolling among your readers. There was eye rolling when Uber started too. We know journalism is totally broken, and probably utterly irreparable. The internet first broke it, then the woke broke it. See Vanity Fair yesterday.

    Traditional Journalism never figured out a new business model that aligned with objective journalism. Will write about that at jeffreycarter.substack.com today, but essentially it was powered by ads. When the internet took ads away, it became powered by clicks.

  11. Brian Anderson was right-

    “When Internet platforms absorbed ad revenue and fragmented audiences, news outlets, to survive—and many didn’t, with more than a third of newspapers disappearing since 2005—began seeking income directly from readers. Subscriptions and ideological loyalty replaced mass advertising. Journalism learned to sell not information but identity.”

    But it’s not all good.

    This miracle enabled by platforms like Substack and X which allows ANY writer to reach vast audiences directly has serious downsides as well- it conversely allows ANY reader to find ANY “Truth” they desire.
    Today’s “news” technology enables a sort of information cafeteria, where the reader can choose whatever “Truth” they desire and discard the rest. No matter what you are pre-inclined to believe, there is an echo- chamber somewhere out there for you, a comforting environment where all your views will be reinforced by like minded people. This site, IMO, is a high quality example.

    On balance is this better than the old days when we all tended to get our information from the same sources”?
    I don’t know.
    But it is definitely one of the reasons we are ever more polarized with each passing year.

  12. The hard left are abhorrent. “They” did not buy the Tribune however. I remember Sam Zell, I remember some garbage hedge fund. Who hired all these lefties from the elite schools? Would a young Mike Royko even be let in the door today? I know he hated the Tribune when he was at the Daily News, he left the Sun Times when Murdoch bought it. Something about not working for a paper he wouldn’t wrap fish in.

    But we have been conditioned to conveniently memory hole only what serves our purpose right now.

    We have competing oligarchs who give breath to the fringes on the right and the left. I see Lindsay Graham, Randy Fine, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, the absolutely morally abject Speaker of the House. How are they any better than Pocahontas, Schumer, Pelosi? They are funded by oligarchs and must do their bidding.

    Kass, the Tribune did you dirty. You were a fixture there with a loyal following. Gregory Royal Pratt and those other clowns in the Guild should be ashamed of themselves for how they treated you.

    However journalism is not dead due to the hard left. Corporatism and consolidation and upward transfer of wealth and power to the monied class have killed journalism and are destroying politics, health care, education, you name it.

    One of the hallmarks of capitalism is competition. The handful of oligarchs that own media spoon feed us propaganda designed to scare us, or rile us up. They want to keep us arguing. They want to manufacture consent and distract us from all of our money that’s being shoveled out the door to kill people in far lands, while we have people sleeping on the street here.

    You’ve come out the other end, and seem to be dong fine now. Many of these columns that you’ve written never would have seen the light of day under the current regime at the trib.

    Would Mr. Dole have given you the free reign you have at JKN?

  14. I grew up in Lyons, the town with all the “Girlie” Joints. A man a street south was the Trib delivery man. Hundreds of papers were delivered early in the morning and a cadre of bicycles hit the streets to deliver the papers. When I ended up in Western Springs, a car would deliver the paper to nearly every house in the area. All of that is as dead as the Trib’s integrity. I think my first indication of it’s slide to the left was R.C. Longworth and his columns about climate change. I thought, were did the Trib find this nut case? When the paper was taken over by Eric Zorn, Rex Huppke and the far left wing, it was in the death spiral of relevance. One of the great joys in my life was calling the Trib circulation department and asking why the Trib was $75 for two months? The gnome on the other end said that was the way it is. I said this is the way it is, CANCEL my subscription. He cared about as much as Pritzker and Johnson care about the citizen’s of Illinois.

    I miss the obits and sports, but even the Sport’s columns are woke. They just hate Matt Shaw. I never thought I would miss the Trib, but life goes on without the hate and venom of that once great journal.

  15. Excellent column. Very interesting information from Huber’s book. I haven’t read it. Also, like many others here, I dropped the Tribune when you left, and never looked back. I follow a couple people in Substack – it’s a good place to find differing opinions on the political landscape.

  18. Yianni,
    Pefect analysis of the current old state of journalism as defined by legacy newspapers. Even as they write their own epitaphs, their “news staff” continues to pour out leftist/socialist bullet points in a lame effort to convince the not-so-smart-ones of us that socialism is the panacea to solve our ills. They seem to miss the point that it has failed miserably wherever it’s been tried! But they persevere, and hope no one of any intellect will notice – as it seems to have worked its magic on the voters of Chicago and state of Illinois. That’s how we got Mayor Pannix and Governor Dumbo! God help us and save us from “community organizers!”

    1. Mr. Manta-
      I don’t endorse socialism either, but I don’t think you should be so arrogant in your judgments.
      The Scandinavian countries, for example, are relatively socialist compared to the U.S. yet they consistently score higher on happiness, personal satisfaction, life expectancy, crime, trust in their government, education, healthcare, environment, and many other important metrics that I would argue are more important than just GDP per capita, where we shine. We should not necessarily feel so superior.

  20. I paid the $1.00 because I no longer live in the Chicago area, but still want to read about the Bears and Cubs. For that $1.00 I get bombarded with Tribune stuff in my email. Today they sent me an email with “opinion” articles, the top one being an editororial calling for the end of “lawfare”. I briefly perused it. So what lawfare do they talk about? The first example is Leticia James, then John Bolton and other “Trump antagonists” and wrapped it up with a discussion about Nixon and Watergate. Nothing about the Trump persecutions or J6 tresspassers ridiculous sentences. Nothing about the fact that Leticia James committed mortgage fraud (so not lawfare) or Bolton having classified materials (so not lawfare). End result, lazy, sloppy, poorly researched and thought out left wing screed. And that is why the Tribune sells an annual subscription for $1. You can’t reject 45% or more of your available customers and expect to be successful.

  21. Born in Berwyn in 1934, I grew up with a copy of the Tribune in the house at all times. My dad was a teletype operator for the Trib until his fatal heart attack at age 63 in December, 1965. He was two years short of his planned retirement with thirty-five years of service at age 65. During his time at the Trib, he became friends with Stanley Link (Tiny Tim) and Chester Gould (Dick Tracv). I have memories of being invited to both of their homes. Also, as a young child, I dutifully shook
    Colonel McComick’s hand while attending the Trib’s Sunday afternoon family Christmas parties in the newsroom on the 4th floor. He stood at the elevator block in the lobby in full-dress WWI uniform and welcomed all who were attending. The problem with that was, his two huge mastiffs sat at his feet, and I felt they would swallow me whole if I made one false move. I truly felt this was too much stress just for a mesh stocking of that old -fashioned hard Christmas candy from Santa.
    I can still see my dad sitting at the kitchen table pouring over the daily obits – or as he referred to them – “The Gaelic Sports Page.” Being Irish, if he saw the name of a second or third cousin (no matter how many “times removed”), he’d take the Douglas Park L and streetcars to be at the wake. (We didn’t have a car until after the war.) He, TOO, believed, if there was a wake, YOU MUST GO.
    I, also, cancelled my paper subscription when JK left. but have subscribed digitally to the Trib; old habits die hard. However, the obits are non-existent and the news coverage is so slanted that it jumps off the screen. But, I keep hoping for a semblance of trustworthy reporting. Lots of Luck!!!
    My dad would be heart-broken.

  23. The death of someone of great achievement and humanity is rightly mourned and honored, including by people who didn’t know the individual personally but benefited from that achievement.

    Dr. Franklin’s and Mr. Kass’ commentaries obviously helped many JKN readers better understand R. Bruce Dold’s central role in what the Tribune once was. Thanks to these two writers for helping me better appreciate my own long decades of benefitting from reading and occasionally writing op-eds for the Tribune (before it was poisoned by the censorious Guild). The Trib was once a great information asset sustained by Dold and brilliant associates including Royko, Kass, Lythcott, McQueary, also some great sportswriters and critics.

    What journalist organization would buy the Tribune, one of America’s most important newspapers, with a conservative yet open-minded perspective, and abruptly turn it into a lightweight promotion of leftist agitprop? It wasn’t journalist at all. It was a hedge fund, much the same type of unprincipled market players who turned late night television into unfunny leftist propaganda.

    Well, the Tribune, the Guild, Colbert, Kimmel, and most legacy media scripted their own demise. Dold’s great achievement is history now, but we can still benefit from part of his legacy here at JKN.

  25. I am glad to wake up in a world with Carole King,Jerry Butler and even crabby John K. I will look at the Sun Times but never Mother Tribune which is a shell of what it was even in the Bob Greene era. I note nobody wants to call the President out for his moronic post on the Reiners but since I could never vote for him,I will still wish all of you who did a Merry Christmas and to John’s family,a little OPA! Maybe we will get along a bit better in the New Year but if not,we will still have the Mayor and the Governor to kick around! p.s.GO DA BEARS! Netflix pays tribute to the 1985 Shuffle song team….

    1. It was a heartless, stupid, moronic post. There. Nobody, no more. And guess what? I’m betting many who voted for Mr. Trump agree: it was a “heartless, stupid, moronic post.”

  26. It’s always sad when a colleague passes away, and his friends reunite in a church to pay their respects. It sounds like Bruce Dold represents the spirit of America that brought so many European immigrants to Chicago, including both my parents’ families.

    Those generations loved American ethics. They’d be disgusted how Tribune fawns over politicians who incite violence against ICE and Border Patrol.

    Tribune executives didn’t care about Bruce Dold or any of the loyal employees who worked as a team to uphold great journalism. They only care about blending into a bizarre corporate culture of woke media.

    They see “Vanity Fair”, “The View”, MS NOW and CNN as beacons of corporate profit, intertwined with Soros-backed mayors, governors and congressmen.

    It’s a dystopian landscape where the trashiest reporters/celebrities validate grotesque fantasies of anarchy. They glorify angry mobs invading Broadview and other suburbs.

    The news no longer matters to Tribune owners and their Guild stooges. They’re selling fantasies of Marxism.

  27. Thank you, John, for including my comments in today’s column. A clear snapshot on what was, and now what is. When I was hired at the Trib (originally in Corporate), Tribune Company was #3 in media companies. We know the rest, sadly.

    Just as a side note, my late sister and her family lived in La Grange, on Waiola, directly across from St. Francis Xavier Church. My nephew is a graduate of their school and her funeral Mass was also at St. Francis.

    Sometimes we learn later how our lives are connected, even if only in the peripheral.

  28. Mr Kass read you for several years (printed paper) down state, till i was told to buy online because they wouldn’t deliver anymore or mail.
    I know im a Hey seed Down Stater in Flyover land. Thanks to you and Mr Royko providind additional insights into the Chicago way.
    Sorry for the loss of your friend. Congratulations on continuing success of your new business. Listen to your lovely wife and take care of your health!

  29. 100 pennies? Nah!
    Thanks for all your columns over the years John. I was a subscriber to the Tribune beginning in high school, loved Royko and wondered if he could be replaced, I won’t disrespect him, but you’ve got your own place next to him, as far as I’m concerned. I left the Tribune shortly after you did. Well, it might be more appropriate to say the Tribune left us.
    ….slats grobnik

  30. In 1970, when I started my first tour in Vietnam, the Tribune had a program where Chicagoans could buy a discounted subscription for Chicago soldiers in Vietnam.

    Someone was kind enough to get one for me. The papers arrived a week or two late of course, usually several days in one bunch. But that didn’t matter to me. It was home!

    I treated them like each paper was a letter from home. Sitting in a bunker, after Sunday Mass at a fire base, I’d read the Sox box scores, or the Bear’s tribulations, as if I was going to the next game. The Sunday Comics were a big hit and got passed around. Even the New York guys liked it.

    When I returned, I subscribed for what I thought would be life. The “Trib” remained an integral part of my life for a decade or two. “Somebody pick up the paper in the Driveway”; was one of my children’s first “jobs”.

    Somewhere in the early ’90’s(?) The tone of the Editorials started to shift. After 10 years of watching the wheels fall off, I finally gave up and cancelled my subscription. Just too much Eric Zorn whining, too little John Kass opining.

    I think John leaving was the exclamation point at the end of a long sentence. That’s when I finally pulled the plug.

    It’s great to see you here John and I look forward to each column.

  31. I wonder if Royko would have fallen for the left/right con of divide and conquer? He was always a free spirit and hated those who wielded power and clout to crush the working man. I’m sure he would have skewered both Barack Hussein Obama and DJT and those who they are beholden to equally. I think he would have seen throw the con maybe.

    1. Yeah, Royko was an equal-opportunity roaster. He did not play favorites, God rest his soul. My mom is the one who turned me on to his columns when I was a kid.

      My mom read the SunTimes from front page to Cubs scores, every day. When Royko left, she followed him to the Trib.

      A while after Royko passed, I started getting calls: “Did you see Kass’ column today?”

      I miss my mom, but I’m glad she has passed on. I would hate for her to see what’s become of journalism and the world.

  32. Grew up in Brookfield reading at least two sports sections per day from the newspapers my father bought riding the Burlington into and out of the city in his daily commute. When I went off to study journalism at Marquette inspired by a great instructor at Lyons Township HS, I wanted nothing more than to land a job at one of the Chicago papers as a sports columnist.

    When I finally moved to Chicago after 29 years in the business in Minneapolis, Milwaukee and elsewhere, I didn’t even want to subscribe to a Chicago paper.

    The bias and the entitlement of the newsroom children who felt authorized to push their narratives on me as “news” made their product worthless to me.
    By then, I was working for a dot.com covering sports without the sidecar of politicized news in tow.

    Newspapers and other legacy media became the 50-year-old women with too much makeup and skirts hiked too high, desperate to attract and hold attention. And social media exacerbated everything — seemingly overnight, nobody wanted to be the audience anymore. Everyone wanted to be the “columnist,” the “expert,” the speaker, acting as if any ol’ opinion was as valid as one grounded in decades of reporting and honing one’s message.

    Rinse, later, repeat. It only has gotten worse.

  33. John. I would not be so quick to write off Orwell’s vision and the Ministry of Truth, regardless of all the “Mom and Pop” journalists now on the Internet. Why? Because of AI. Many folks these days seek authoritative answers – say about vaccines or what have you – from various AI platforms. And where do most of these platforms get their basic truths and facts? Well a lot of it comes from Wikipedia. And Wikipedia it is undeniably often very biased to a particular point of view. Please think about the implications this. Orwell was correct.

  34. Well stated Mark. A man and his wife are brutally murdered by a deranged son and our orange man with his piss colored cotton candy hair makes such a hurtful comment. Sounds like moutza qualifying vote JK. I mean in a month DJK pardons
    a banana boat cocaine dealing former president and a crooked DEMORAT house of rep member.
    What more do u need JK for a moutza?
    Or is that award only for lefty Commies and not right wing neo Nazis.

  35. Yes Thomas, I thought Trump would do what a politician does when commenting on a tragedy like the Reiner murders. Politicians often say reassuring things. Words to give hope and solace in difficult circumstances. Insightful deep comforting thoughts. THANKFULLY TRUMP IS NO POLITICIAN. Would you have preferred that he would lie and wax poetic over someone who attacked him and his family on a very personal level? Who advocated that he be put in prison, by legal or illegal means? A once very good film maker but who in recent years had become a propagandist for the Democrats. One of Reiners last films, which massively bombed last year was a critique about people who supported Trump. A 120 minute slagging off of conservatives. It opened and closed in days due to lack of interest. Whoopie Goldberg stated Trump was “the lowest of the low” with his answering of a question truthfully about Reiners murder. This is NOT what a politician does. Reiner, like the aforementioned Harpies on “The View” celebrated personal attacks on Trump and his family. A late night host calling Trumps daughter Ivanka a four lettered word that rhymes with “runt” was celebrated as an act of great comedy. Not one of these shills called out the idiot for her ignorance. They made their battles with Trump very personal. Trump merely gives it back to them on their level in a language they understand since they use the same language in their vitriol aimed at him. I’m sure if any of the “runts” on “The View” drop dead Trump will have some choice words to offer “comfort and solace” to the masses. I can hardly wait.

  36. BTW…Hollywood is about to release an animated “re-telling” of “Animal Farm”. The story has been altered to the point of COMPLETELY changing what the story was actually about. Remember, the lie is much more important than the truth…

  37. There will never be another Royko. I subscribed for years and did drop “The Paper when they dumped Kass, but he ain’t no Royko as much as I love his Christmas column, and many others.

    While the D’s are everything you they are are and more, how can you cheer for the other “team”, or Trump? What has he delivered on?

    Who pays tariffs?
    Where is his health care plan?
    Why are the wars that he would end in the first week still raging?
    Why are we blowing up fishing boats?
    Where are the Epstein files we were promised?
    Why do you people tolerate being lied to just as Dem losers do?
    Why isn’t a “conservative” Congress trying to use whatever power they have to curtail the war economy and shift to making America First Again.

    Why hasn’t the “Deep State” been curtailed at all?

    Why support any of the clowns?

    If Obama is a One Eyed Jack, and I have to agree on that one. Why can’t the other guy be described as Orange with piss colored cotton candy hair. He wears more make up than Stormy Daniels.

    You do know his wife was likely one of Epstein’s girls too? You know Epstein worked for Maxwell’s dad. Who has connections to……. Sh…… Don’t say it.

    Talk about Deep State. You can’t get any deeper than this Epstein business. Likely trillions passed through him and his web of associates, countless lives ruined, all the abuse, murder, mayhem, wars.

    Talk about chumbolones. I think Trump supporters are the equivalent of Chicagoans when it comes to the chumbolone moniker.

    Cook County is penny ante compared to their garbage.

    1. To Kass’ credit, he never claimed he was “another” Mike Royko. And get over your provincialism Robert. To folks who lived in SF, there will never be another Herb Caen. And to folks like me, from the Big Apple, there will never be another Jimmy Breslin or even Pete Hamill.

  38. John, I’ve been a subscriber since the beginning. Mea Culpa, I’m guilty of getting the trib for a buck a year. Primarily for the comics, sports and the occasional Paul Vallas letter. The Tribune and the Slime Times are in the same boat. What do you suggest reading* for local news?

  39. Yes indeed. $1 says it all. They can’t give it away. We get the digital version only because my husband insists on reading the sports section. The rest is a leftist rag, not worth “the paper it’s printed on!” Occasionally my husband will read one of the commentaries and be disgusted by it. Been subscribing to JohnKassNews.com since the beginning and we always look forward to reading your columns. Merry Christmas, John!

  40. The only things worth two shites in either paper are the Sunday crossword puzzles. I have a liberal friend who doesn’t do crosswords who gives them to me after he finishes reading the rest of the left-wing propaganda.

  41. I love you John Kass. Those of us born and raised in the “Chciago Way” are forced to comment about our great city from the fringes – out of town. The new Chicagoians will tell us we don’t share their values. It hurts to be an outsider in my own city.

  42. I am one of the last Boomers or 1st genX, born in 1964 on the cusp of 1965. We had the Trib, Sun-Times and my father brought home the daily news after work. I grew up with Royko and later you….both wrote great columns from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Royko hated bureaucrats but liked government (go figure). We had both Siskel and Ebert in the house. At Mt Carmel Bro Hugh liked the Trib and we got a subscription as one of our books for current affairs class. he taught us how to fold it properly while riding on the bus or train. I had a subscription from that day on , even in college. I remember Brown backing cops and FF’s one week and hating them the next, apparently his editor told him to get tough on them. I remember canceling the subscription when it was just too much apologizing for the Marxists. It felt like I was sneaking out of a party and everyone saw me try to do it. I have subscriptions to a couple political magazines where prominent politicians post position papers and i have your service….still miss spreading the paper across the kitchen table.
    Keep the faith, god Bless.

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