The Loss of Trust in Legacy Media
Editor’s note: Today’s article is drawn from a speech John Kass delivered earlier this week to students and faculty at Center for Conservative Alternatives seminar held at Hillsdale College.
It is an honor to be here with you today. As you all realize, Hillsdale is beautiful and a very special, necessary place.
How necessary?
I’m thinking of that wonderful book by Thomas Cahill, “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” and his description of Ireland as an “island of saints and scholars” preserving the Western tradition.
That’s the role I see Hillsdale College playing in today’s America.
But we’re not on some rocky island in the corner of Europe. We’re in the center of a Western civilization that is in trouble.
Today, I stand before you as something of an oddity worthy of exhibition by PT Barnum, perhaps in a cage:
An old newspaperman, and even worse, a conservative newspaperman.
My good friend Prof. Charles Lipson, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago and a frequent guest on my podcast, the Chicago Way, offered some advice on this talk.
“You’re not a professor, so don’t act like one at Hillsdale. You’re a reporter. Talk like a reporter on the ground. Not from 30,000 feet.”
So here I am on the sidewalk. A gumshoe reporter without a Camel filter.
As some of you may know, I was a reporter and nationally syndicated lead columnist at the Chicago Tribune for some 40 years, that is until leftist billionaire George Soros showed the Tribune and me that Soros was boss.
The Jacobin, pro-Soros newsroom union at the Tribune defamed me and I had to get out. The Jacobins demanded that I apologize and submit to a struggle session.
I refused.
So, I left, took a buyout, and started in new media, johnkassnews.com where I write twice a week and run guest columns featuring other excellent writers, too.
And I continue doing my weekly podcast, The Chicago Way. johnkassnews.com is successful, and it pays the bills, but it’s not all candy and nuts.
For example, The Illinois Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to play the Chicago Way by deciding who can write for me and who has to shut up—and they’ve decided to silence a well-respected retired judge.
So now I’m reaching out to legal scholar Jonathan Turley, who is also familiar with Chicago’s corrupt political culture. If any of you know Professor Turley, or any good First Amendment lawyers, please let me know.
Meanwhile, the Tribune is dying as are many other legacy papers. I was able to climb out from the wreckage and start something new. And so can you.
Today’s talk is about THE DECLINE OF TRUST IN LEGACY MEDIA, and I was there when it went bad and newsrooms began looking down their noses at the middle-class people who supported and paid for the newspaper.
But before then, I was able to interview one of my heroes, Victor Davis Hanson, for a column and so, since we’re at Hillsdale and before we begin in earnest, I’d like to have a moment to pray for his recovery from serious and difficult surgery. (Pause)
America needs VDH for his clarity, especially now, when what we know as the establishment news media refuses to provide needed context in this time of chaos.
And as the Democrat nullificationists of Minnesota are refusing to follow federal immigration law as if we’re in South Carolina of 1861.. In this, the Democrats are reverting to form by refusing to follow immigration law in most blue states.
So, how did the Legacy media lose the public trust?
Simple: By mocking the people who bought the newspapers and supported the advertising, by opening the newsroom wide to the snobs of the American left, by adopting the language of the left.
And by manufacturing demigods like Barack Obama to lead the country where it did not want to go.
Journalism lost something irreplaceable as corporate legacy media created Obama as something of a plaster saint. What they lost, or abandoned, was the one thing a journalist needs to do the job:
Curiosity.
And he, Obama, led American journalism into a special hell, having his shadowy Deep State operatives like the CIA’s John Brennan and the FBI’s James Comey manufacturing phony evidence to cast Donald Trump as the tool of Putin’s Russia—even though they knew that was totally untrue.
But that didn’t stop Deep State, establishement newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post to push these notions into Pulitzer Prizes, and American journalism sealed itself into the vault of horror.
I suppose I’d like to begin with a biddable orchestra playing something like Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, along with clacking typewriters of an old-time newsroom in the background, some blend of hard-boiled knowingness with optimism in the big cities, the skyscrapers, the pedestrians hurrying to and fro…
Those rising notes of the clarinet make me think of Chicago and big cities and much younger versions of me in a suit and smoking a cigarette on Michigan Avenue in the shadow of the great gothic skyscraper we still know as The Tribune Tower, though the paper has abandoned it.
And the clear-eyed optimism my grandfather had, Papou Yianni, when he came to Chicago in the 1890s. To make a living he became a fruit and vegetable peddler, first carrying his wares on his back. And later, he could afford to buy a horse drawn wagon, and still later 10 wagons.
Our extended family—Roosevelt Democrats and Reagan Republicans—were newspaper readers, learning the mysterious ways of the strange native people we called the Americani.
In the pages of the Chicago Tribune, we learned how to become American. My aunts loved the paper and learned from it how to make that most American dessert, Jell-O, with the horrid chunks of fruit suspended in it.
In those days and beyond you had to be a fool not to lose money running a big city newspaper like the Tribune. You could make a 25 percent profit year after year after year. These were not newspapers that despised capitalism. They were the bibles of capitalism.
And if you were in private business, you depended on the newspaper to reach customers. Business had to play ball with the publishers of the Tribune, or the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer the Detroit Free Press and so on.
And then Al Gore ruined it all by inventing the Internet…and newspaper advertising revenues went to hell.
Many of you know the story. The collapse of ad revenues meant the newspapers relied heavily on subscriptions.
And everything became about feelings and emotion, and unfortunately so did the news itself.
There’s a Ray Bradberry story from 1963 that I’m fond of, “To The Chicago Abyss,” a dystopian tale of an old man about my age now.
He travels through a bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape where cultural memory has been forbidden or lost, subversively reminiscing about the wonderful foods, items, and sensory experiences of the past—such as hot coffee, real butter, chocolate, and crisp autumn air—to remind people of what they have lost; vacuum-packed coffee, fresh milk, chesterfield cigarettes and candy bars.
He’s a threat to the establishment, and his reminiscing is seen as dangerous, and it tries to suppress him.
Please keep your eye on the door in case the authorities try bursting in, but I’m not going to tell you of canned cream corn or chunky candy bars or big macs and fries in beef tallow.
I do remember a name that helps illustrate the point: Melissa Click…
November 2015 at the University of Missouri (Mizzou).
Melissa Click, one of the first AWFLs, an assistant professor of mass media at Mizzou, was filmed shrieking for “muscle” to remove student photojournalist Tim Tai from a public, on-campus protest “safe space.”
Leftists demanded a safe space at Mizzou and later even journalists were demanding safe spaces from the dangerous, triggering ideas found in the Federalist Papers.
When did America journalism break faith with the people?
Conservative writer Jude Russo wrote recently that it wasn’t only one thing that caused the loss of trust. There were many things.
Yes, the unions came in to the newsrooms, and that pushed newspapers farther to the left.
And yes, online advertising took print advertising and shook it to death like a Manchester Terrier pouncing on a rat in the alley.
What ties the demand for safe space and the collapse of advertising was the advancement of Barack Obama.
And I was there in Chicago when he was hatched from an egg laid by America’s foremost domestic terrorists of the day, William Ayres and Bernadine Dorn.
They had powerful friends. Ayers’s daddy was close friends with Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, a name that college deans take notice of. And so, the University of Illinois hired Ayres and Northwestern hired his wife, Bernardine Dorn. Obama was introduced to the leftist Chicago intelligencia at the home of socialist Alice Palmer and the communist Buzz Palmer. I knew them.
Who wasn’t interested in the hatching of the Obama egg?
The New Yorker, the New York Times, Time Magazine and the others of legacy media. They weren’t interested in the real Obama history, but they were most interested in Obama hagiography.
Consider just one image from that period; Obama walking barefoot on the beach in Hawaii, as if Pegasus rising from the sea foam.
But legacy media wasn’t interested in the fact that the federally convicted Chicago bagman Tony Rezko helped buy Obama’s first home in Hyde Park, or what that means. They didn’t want to know he was a creature of the political machine. Manipulating narratives replaced reporting and analysis.
The Tribune broke the story about bagman Rezko and Obama’s first dreamhouse in 2006, but it didn’t even make the Tribune’s own front page.
What does that tell you?
As the beat reporter or political reporter in Chicago at the time, I got a lot of calls from the New Yorker and the New York Times. But they didn’t want to hear anything about Tony Rezko.
All these people said they wanted to know the real story about Barack Obama, but they really didn’t want to hear that real story.
I’d tell them he’s a silky. He’s a socialist. I tried to tell them the fact that his beautiful mansion in Hyde Park Chicago was secured by the corrupt Rezko, and they didn’t want to hear that. And so I saw first hand that what we now call the legacy media—of which I was a part back then—had a certain way of dealing with the truth and the narrative. Which was to ignore it.
They would select the narrative and shape it and they didn’t want some yokel from Chicago, some peasant gumshoe telling them what they already knew but didn’t want you to know it.
They didn’t want to you to know about that Barack Obama.
The servant of the crooked Chicago Daley Machine, the friend of the federally jailed bagman Rezko who was without an arrow pointing to the true north. In Springfield where the Illinois legislature meets, Obama was nothing, a back bencher, the kind of guy the big guys would send out for coffee.
I’ll tell you a story they didn’t want to know about years ago. That was when I first started writing the column. It came out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, four times a week.
It was a terrible ,terrible schedule because I missed Sunday, the day for church and our family.
In February 2003 the E2 nightclub disaster happened. 21 young people were trampled to death in a locked stairwell.
A fight broke out on a Saturday night and one of the security guards tried to use pepper spray to break it up. People smelled that pepper spray and panicked and ran for the doors, but they couldn’t get out because the doors were locked.
So, the next morning on Sunday I was driving out there and pulled up.
Cops knew me so they let me pull up.
And there was Barack, hands in his pockets, posing like a sad, lonely man. He said the owners were friends of his. He was sad the kids had died.
Across the street were weekend news crews, the legacy media’s Obama hagiography machine was taking shape.
They hadn’t recognized him, but the weekend crews knew me and they complained that I was on the other side of the police line.
“They know me,” I said. “When they get here, they’ll ask you questions. Get out of here if you don’t want to answer.”
He loped away fast.
In the years after, the media’s obsequiousness continued, intensifying.
I was at his first inauguration, and the legacy media treated him as if he was Mr. Tumnus, the forest faun from Chronicles of Narnia, and they would have cakes and tea with him and take a nap in his lap.
But that coziness led to disaster for the American republic and the media itself.
Obama, the silky of the Chicago Machine became the silky of the Deep State.
And we found that the gentle Mr. Tumnus is extraordinarily vicious, according to documents declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
What I said about Obama as the silky of the Deep State is underscored by recent reporting by Real Clear Investigations and Paul Sperry, that I have reposted with permission from Real Clear Politics.
Obama had his intelligence chiefs manufacture evidence that Donald Trump was a creature of Putin. And legacy papers got their Pulitzer Prizes and kept them. Will that end in indictments? One can hope.
Credibility of the legacy corporate media began to fall apart.
But don’t be sad.
All that means is there are many more opportunities now that the old statist guardians are gone.
And that means optimism for a free press and free inquiry.
When I learned journalism, it wasn’t an excuse for creative writing.
I learned it as a trade, a blue-collar trade from grizzled old timers at the Tribune’s City Desk, beginning when I was a copy boy.
The legendary city editor Bernard Judge would scream “COPY’ and we’d run to grab the copy books—sheets of typing paper and carbon copies—and separating them as we literally ran from desk to desk, spiking that copy (no OSHA in newsrooms) on the foreign desk, city desk, national desk and to the ladies of the feature department
We learned to build stories the way we’d learn to frame a house, from the foundation up.
The basics were who was there, what happened to whom, where was it and how was it done.
Who what when where how.
There’s nothing mysterious about it. AND IF YOUR MOTHER TELLS YOU SHE LOVES YOU, CHECK IT OUT.
Newspapering was a blue-collar enterprise.
The Tribune’s managing editor was a tank commander in Vietnam. Our editorial page editor was a soldier in Vietnam. He went to Yale Law school, received the Pulitzer Prize when it meant something. They had common sense.
They did not look down their noses at subscribers. And they did not engage in the creation of saints, that came later.
Our managing editor, Dick Ciccone, gave me some good advice.
“Don’t reach for your notepad at first. Listen to what they’re talking about. Let them know you’re interested in what they have to say.”
They were of a common-sense generation that went to war. They were not overtly sentimental. They were not hagiographers.
When it came to politics, they were iconoclasts.
One word of caution as we look to the past. It wasn’t all that great. Not really.
The publishers were gate keepers, as were the network anchors from ABC, CBS and NBC who would decide what the news would be.
They were the establishment. They would dictate the narrative and the narrative leaned to the left.
It wasn’t the so-called Golden Age. Not really.
They would ram the news down America’s throats.
In recent years it became obvious that as they raised Obama to the status of demigod, establishment journalists had lost their curiosity.
In the journalism culture the left controlled, curiosity threatened to veer off into dangerous territory.
The processing of Barack Obama began strangling the republic years ago, just about the time the media began treating him as a mythological creature. They lost all credibility about him. And he took that journalistic adoration, turned it and killed legacy media, too.
And I witnessed firsthand all the reporters wiggling like puppies, all but soiling the carpets at Obama’s approach. The media treated Barack Obama as something of a winged sea creature, a Pegasus up from the beaches of Hawaii as they smoked their Hopium in every newsroom in America. Their eyes were slits. And he was their wizard of a thousand kings.
They wanted to ride him as if he were a unicorn. They wanted to love him too. He was their fantasy black politico.
There was no way they could have been objective about him, any more than a child could be objective about their first pony.
So, to get some distance, I called a wise colleague Steve Huntley, the retired editorial writer for the Chicago Sun Times. He spent 30 years there. And I worked across the street at the Trib.
He explained that there are many reasons the American people have lost trust in legacy media. If you had a sharp enough scalpel, you might consider the shift to exclusive subscription models, increased where partisanship has greater leverage.
Things change. Twitter now X has changed it. They hate that Elon Musk, owner of X, has broken the iron grip of the gatekeepers.
The Tribune and the rest of the legacy media may be closed to us, and is calcified, but all you have to do is look at your phone to find the open gates.
John Kass News is succeeding, so is the Federalist, edited by the great Mollie Hemingway. As are many others.
The old leftist gatekeepers have lost the plot. They are panicking and desperate.
This is the time of the curious intellect. This is your time and this is Hillsdale’s time. The path is well lit, but it’s not easy. But all you have to do is take that first step.
Thank you for your time.
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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.
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Comments 45
Proud of you, John!
More so, you connected all the dots to the root causes Obama and the uncurious minds!
I was at fund-raiser at Bourbon Street about the time that Il Senator Barry Obama got his ass handed to him by Bobby Rush in the Congressional Race ( 2000?). I was working a Leo HS and new the neighborhood and the players involved in a “community improvement” scheme. I mentioned this to a cousin, to the Irish, blood kin means intense loyalty to one another, and was showered with @#$% You and all your right-wing friends.” Obama meant more than decades of shared living to a very uncurious mind, We have no contact to this day, Obama killed more than curiosity.
Well done, John. Here is link to story from Obama’s elevation days.
https://www.nationalreview.com/media-blog/obama-earmark-investigation-launched-greg-pollowitz/
Apologies – it’s early for these old eyes: I Knew the neighborhood and the payers involved . . . and “@#$% You and all your right wing friends,” My right wing friends were all 19th Ward Democrats BTW. I guess you broad-brush when you don’t think.
Pat Hickey . LOL well said. . It’s the same way out in the western suburbs. Anyone who voted for job stability, lower taxes or religious belief in sanctity-of-life for unborn babies is now labeled a “right wing conspirator” by the Sean Casten-types who seized control of every school board, every library district and all the suburban newspapers. And it all began with media adoration of Obama as the next Mahatma Gandhi.
There is no Media anymore John. They have been bought by the Left and Communism. I do not watch TV or read the Paper anymore. The weather is the only think I watch. No TV it is all about murders and no one seems to do anything about the poor.
God Bless you John.
Well done sir.
Hillsdale having you speak to their students is an honor for both sides. A very worthy honor.
Superb. I expected no less. The future leaders of America in the audience will remember it.
The commies tried to eliminate you, to disgrace you and now they are losing as you thrive.
σεβασμός
Keep up the good fight John. Stay in the ring. Today’s chillens that don’t learn spelling, cursive writing, or how to tie their shoe laces will definitely not learn journalism. That is a dead art.
The sad part is that someday these kids will be the leaders. If you think today’s leaders suck take a blink into the future.
Even as the drip, drip, drip of info comes out about St. Barack, he of the “scandal-free” presidency, his acolytes will trash it as racism and conspiracy theory.
If a tree falls in the woods, but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Another important Obama event not to forget was the August 2008 appearance of Stanley Kurtz, an investigative journalist, who was on WGN extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg to discuss his findings of Annenberg papers which reviewed the relationship of Bill Ayers with a young Barack Obama. Obama’s campaign office, which was down the street from the Tribune Tower, home of WGN instructed his supporters to flood the phone lines at WGN to accuse Kurtz of character assassination of Obama. Another way to stifle the truth. I listened to that show live that night.
By the way, I know the couple who were in a bidding war for Hyde Park property that Obama bought with Rezko’s help. There was a 1/2 city lot attached to the original property and the Obama’s were not able to afford without Rezko to the rescue.
You will know them by their works….”Governer” (Governor), “Facism” (Fascism), “teaches” (teachers), “mor” (more), and “deserv” (deserve) from the litany of misspelling on woke “educators”: protest picket signs. These are today’s local scholastic vanguard leading the feckless children’s crusade, kids with abysmal reading and comprehension test scores. “In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is the king.) Erasmus.
Thank you John and Hillsdale for providing light in the current intellectual dark ages, thank God for the ancient Irish scribes, but where care they today…..woke and lost.
I suppose many of them got their education at the “Learing Center” to its equivalent.
Very well stated.
It’s all INFOTAINMENT now.
Another reporter like you, Liz Collins, of MN got severed from her tv anchorship for telling the truth about Geo. Floyd. Check her out.
This was a very good speech. You are an expert on the birthing of Obama and the hatching of a plot by oligarchs like Soros to divide us, keep us fighting to silence critics, while they are all able to do their bidding. Buying and selling our political class and judges like so many nickels and dimes.
That’s what you miss. There is no left, there is no right. Ayers and Dorn knew Old Man Daley, He was a leftist? Mr. Hickey mentioned the 19th Ward political organization. They are leftists. There is only power. Money flows uphill and shit flows down. The powerful use stupid students, AWFL’s, union bosses, “journalists”, podcasters, anyone, to keep us divided.
We still have the US Constitution. Sanctuary cities are unconstitutional. Why has ther not been a case in front of a Trump friendly Supreme Court? Further, Republicans have a slim majority in the House and the Senate, yet, we’ve seen no bill on real immigration reform in years. We’ve seen no action on trying to balance the budget. We’ve seen no bill on addressing access to health care and are mired in a system where even if you have insurance, you still are at their mercy and we have a shortage of beds, quality care, not to mention how we take care of our seniors who do not have the means to take care of themselves.
We have the best government money can buy. The Congress is full of whores who sell their souls, unlike you, who stood your ground and saved your self respect.
Yet, Thomas Massie is in a fight for his political life right now. Rand Paul is fighting alone. MTG has left the House. DJT, Clinton, and any number of oligarchs and politicos have been named in the Epstein files that show only the tip of the iceberg in the type of cretins that have so much say in how out nation runs.
Obama had the files, Bush, Trump, Biden, now Trump. Did anyone out there watch the Netflix 4 parter on Epstein? Grizzled cops had this scumbag dead to rights and he was given a slap on the wrist. We allow pedophiles to run our government.
If Watergate happened today. No one would be charged. POTUS surely would never resign.
But let’s keep fighting the radical left.
Robert
As they use to say on Laugh In: SOCK IT TO ME.
As usual you are succinct and nail it.
Again, read Whitney Webbs book: ONE NATION UNDER BLACKMAIL.
A fully documented text of the “sordid union between Intelligence and Organized Crime that gave rise to Epstein.”
A fact based expose!
You state that “We still have the US Constitution. Sanctuary cities are unconstitutional. Why has there not been a case in front of a Trump friendly Supreme Court?” Well because under the anti commandeering interpretation of the 10th amendment – blessed no less by the Godfather of Constitutional originalism, Justice Antonin Scalia himself – “sanctuary” cities are not unconstitutional. That means that the federal government cannot commandeer state apparatus – like local law enforcement – to enforce federal law. Of course it also means that the states cannot actively impede the feds from enforcing federal law (as in Minnesota), but the feds must use their own law enforcement apparatus to do so. And as to your query why has there not been a case testing this interpretation before the court? Well because there already has been: New York v US (1992) and Prinz v US (1997).
Wonderful job as always, you continue to make your Greek ancestors proud. I think what bothers me the most about how we are treated by the media is not that they lie to us and tell us how to think, but that they get to decide what things we are not allowed to know.
Thinking back on the “Russian Operative” farce regarding Trump, the people who engineered that are now regarded by the (sic) “media” as recognized “experts” who are regularly sought out for their commentary, and probably paid handsomely for it. And a lot of the gullible public are eating it up. Yet another reason why I worry every day about the world and country my grandchildren are going to inherit.
Lest anyone think John is fibbing, I have seen him smoke that cigarette in front of Trib Tower. All local tv/radio/print news had to do was go hyper local. Go DEEP into local stories. In depth, objective, and consistent. Instead, they tried to compete nationally and X crushed them. The speed of the internet was faster than the speed of the printing press.
What did they do? Cut labor costs. They hired rookies fresh out of journalism school where they had been indoctrinated. In places like Chicago, they refused to root out, discover, and cover corruption and instead would only write about it after the fact.
Then came Obama.
Good point. They neglected the advantage of the slower printing press over the spontaneous internet: the chance for in depth “investigative” journalism. Covid – and Chicago’s inane response (like closing off the Lake Front) is exhibit “A”.
Excellent JK, sad to see the demise of the print media in our lifetime.
Bravo!
DOC Rudd, Whitney Webb, Glenn Greenwald, KIm Iversen, Jimmy Dore, they are some of the few who tell it like it really is. Oh, and Judge Napolitano too. Judge Nap was kicked off Fox for telling the truth about Israel and how whatever they’re doing over there is about as far removed from God as what Trump and all his friends were doing to those young women. Oligarchs own the country. There are some very powerful oligarchs who love Israel. Therefore, USA loves Israel. USS Liberty, Nuclear secrets, Jonathan Pollard, fake war in Iraq, pedos who flee there to escape execution? Nothing to see here!
I like Kass, but VDH and his History chops aside, this left/right thing is childish. It’s three card monti, designed to distract us. He knows better. His brother works in intelligence. Surely he knows about all the espionage, blackmail, extortion that goes on.
And then they hide behind God.
It’s sickening
Legacy media is dying by its own hand. When you see the same propaganda being pushed by the newspapers and the television media it is very, very obvious. People aren’t buying their bullshit anymore. When they propagandize whatever hot topic of the day, aka “Ice” , people can smell the bullshit. Phrases like Minnesota Mom”, “Minnesota Nurse” , and the phrase ” A US Citizen” the new favorite, are used repeatedly to construct a narrative of mass media. All false of course. American Jails are full of
” US Citizens ” so this does not protect you from being arrested.
” Minnesota Mom” was in the criminal act of impeding Federal Officers in the performance of lawful duties before attempting to run an agent over leading to her being shot. The ” Minnesota Nurse ” had committed numerous criminal offenses prior to being shot. Criminal damage to government property, failing to notify law enforcement officers that he was carrying a firearm ( twice, in the prior engagement where he damaged a government vehicle) and, if reports are accurate, failing to have a state ID on his person while carrying a firearm. Strangely enough, which has led our Leftist Media to suddenly become Second Amendment advocates after years of crying for more” gun control ” . I guess they can’t quite make up their mind. Media coverage of Minnesota are all psy ops designed to motivate low information voters to the ballot box. The fact that legacy media is also bottoming out shows that most aren’t buying the nonsense anymore.
Enrique: Yeah, I was curious about that as well: Nurse Pretti failing to have a state ID and CCL on his person while carrying a firearm. So I looked up Minnesota CCL requirements. Apparently failing to have a valid state ID and CCL license on your person if one indeed has a valid license registered by the state is a mere “petty” misdemeanor i.e. similar to a speeding ticket, subject to a fine.
Barring an outstanding event [like 9/11 or the Civil War] you really can’t judge a president until he’s out of office at least 10-20 years. That’s when the results of his programs & decisions are visible and most of the boosters or detractors have faded.
President Obama is at about the 10-year mark and his reputation and influence have already begun to plunge. He expanded the size of govt and created Obama Care – which is failing. His designated successor failed, his foreign policy efforts came to naught. He failed to build a lasting coalition as the Reagan coalition died off.
He will, at best, be remembered as largely insignificant except as the 1st Black President and his [illegal?] inappropriate meddling in later elections and the Biden Admin. His will be a story of unrealized potential, missed opportunities, and failure.
BTW I agree, there never was a ‘Golden Age’ of journalism. Like Historians, journalists are dependent on their sources, the sources come with a price. Journalists with bipartisan sources seem to be a rare and dying breed.
PS: I hope the students enjoyed the speech as much as I enjoyed the transcript!
Well I disagree.. It takes far more than ten years to historically “judge” a President. And that is because perspective in history really is a long game. Look no further than how Dwight Eisenhower’s status has risen over the decades.
So you mean you agree since I said AT LEAST 10-20 years. Eisenhower’s ‘rehabilitation’ began in the ’80s, about 20 years after he left office and 10 years after he died. Coolidge’s took closer to 60 years and Grant [as president] closer to 90. There is also a difference between judgement [or evaluation] and a different generations view. As a boomer who benefitted greatly from Eisenhower’s drawdown from a wartime economy, his infrastructure and education improvements [which went on long after his presidency] as well as his low-key but decisive stands on the civil rights movement I would have a different set of priorities then my father [who did his service under Eisenhower and then got laid off during his second term. I would argue that the pick up in math & science scores, the growth of suburbs, the victory of the civil rights movement, the success of nuclear deterance [as opposed to conventional], and the rise in standards of living that resulted from his policies showed their success well within a decade of the end of the Eisenhower Administration.
Nicely argued. I agree.
JK: will I be reading the speech in a future edition of Imprimis?
Thanks for this awesome column, John. From the perspective of a long-time union member, Obama was a disaster to young families. (I joined the United Brotherhood of Carpenters during the Jimmy Carter era.)
Obama betrayed the trade unions, by brainwashing corporate simpletons into believing so-called “diversity” would strengthen the construction industry.
Look at the delays and cost overruns in Obama’s lakefront presidential library, and you see a reflection of America’s new home market. Very few young families can purchase their own house or condo, because builders are hampered by idiotic environmental restrictions and obsessive-compulsive hiring quotas.
Older houses are crammed full of non-citizens who somehow obtain HUD-backed mortgages.
Obama’s 8 years as a grand exalted guru of all things “diversity” brought chaos to construction sites. It’s like the Tower of Babel, where 2 or 3 languages are spoken simultaneously. People who snuck across our border are framing houses, installing ductwork and hanging gutters.
There is no future in the building trades for sons of union rank-and-file. We’ve become expendable, replaced by foreign labor that’s loyal to the Pritzker/Walz cult of criminal fraud.
The word “union” no longer means blue collar workers. The post-Obama organized labor movement is dominated by socialist government bureaucrats and hostile teachers who want kids protesting instead of learning. . . . . https://abc7chicago.com/post/chicago-school-walkout-held-anti-ice-protest-river-park-streamwood-high-students-walk/18529755/
The media whitewash of all troubling Obama facts in their “first draft of history” is a sad prelude to the palm fronds they laid for his feigned centrist successors in office. Obama decried a red and blue America before taunting that the consequences of elections justify his fundamental transformation and racial polarization of America.
In 2020 Biden was painted as sensible, seasoned and bipartisan. His incompetence was denied even as his autopen politburo wrecked our borders, economy, foreign policy and public safety.
In 2025 Sherrill and Spanberger were elected as centrists, and now also follow the Obama tactic of emerging from that coccoon as full fledged leftist radicals.
None of the above would be possible with a curious, well informed media. Their “first draft” has been a disaster, and it remains for those like JK and VDH to properly edit for posterity.
Γιάννη,
I quit the trib long ago, just before you safely departed, as it drifted so far into socialist territory that it became an indiscernable rag! I, too, spotted the fake Obama a mile away as you did. So how does this nobody, who hates America, listens to a reverend or years, spewing more hate -become president? Simple – media love! But now they’re over, disintegrating into oblivion! Long live the Kasso way!! Εις ανώτερα!!
John, excellent speech! You nailed Prof. Lipsons advice to “be yourself” and helped them understand what happened to legacy media from the perspective of a reporter/columnist who did it as a career! I learned basic journalism in high school from a wonderful English/Journalism teacher who instilled us to be curious and continually ask who, what, where, when, how, and sometimes get into why? They don’t instill those basics any more at the universities that purportedly teach journalism (like Missouri), hence all the legacy media new generation “reporters” are trained to repeat the “narrative” with fancy language. The true new generation journalists like Nick Shirley of Minnesota Corruption fame are who you get real information from, because they are curious and ask the basic questions! I used the Basic Journalistic principles throughout my own career in food research & development, as they help you get to the bottom of things. Hopefully, you inspired some future leaders there at Hillsdale!
A riveting speech. I wish I’d been there.
It’s funny that you mention standing on the sidewalk in the shadow of the Tribune tower smoking. That was the first time I met you back in 2013 when I got invited to have a talk with the Editorial Board.
Only John Kass could wordsmith an article this brilliantly written. Thank you, John.
Hillsdale College is a better college now. When I was at Marquette, we craved speakers and speeches like this.
I’ll redact the asinine reference to 1861 and just focus on the balance. But speaking of which, I would love to know how good journalism was in 1861, before the radial left shut down 300 newspapers (Democrat/conservative papers), destroyed their physical assets and even murdered an editor. While the pencil neck twig Medill pretended that he had “made” Abraham Lincoln and could “unmake” him any time he wished. I think Medill called Lincoln “that old man”. Yeah, back in the day.
Way back before the Grand Army pounced on the opportunity to gang rape 15 year old girls and set fire to young women in labor – so that Slavery could be replaced with systemic racism, Urban apartheid, perpetual cradle to grave welfare, raw hatred and coming soon – Marxism.. All north of the Mason Dixon line.
Back in 1861, every neighborhood had their paper, every where – and in many different languages. Well before Lincoln hagiographers like James McPherson saw the opportunity to make themselves look big for the bear.
What goes around, comes around. We all, North and South, have the opportunity to marginalize the Left now – again 🙂
Lets go!
Kass, that was splendid and it was good for the Hillsdale students to hear your voice, could be a defining moment in their lives.
True reality, John. I also admired Bernie Judge who I worked for at the Sun-Times. If I may, I’d like to mention some more real journalists from the neighborhood that I encountered when I started at the Daily News.
Seated next to me was Bill Mooney (Moo). He enlisted in the Canadian infantry in 1940 before the war. He transferred to the U.S. air force when we entered the war. He spent 54 months in Europe during the war, 22 of them as a prisoner in the notorious Stalag 17. He coordinated a team that nailed Illinois auditor Orville Hodge for corruption for which he received a Pulitzer Prize when that meant something. When a box alarm sounded in the newsroom, he could identiry the neighborhood in which is was pulled.
Lloyd Green, rewrite man extraordinaire, served as a gunner in a ball turret of a B-29 over Germany. He was wounded. He flew 18 missions, an extraordinary achievement when few surveyed the mission.
Ray Coffey, whom you mentioned, I thought was the best reporter I ever met, better than such well-know journalists as Royko. In Vietnam, he didn’t hang around the 5 O’Clock Follies news briefings that were a circus, but actually covered the war from the frontlines. He later joined the Sun-Times as managing editor and editorial board chairman, where I worked for him.
Ed Rooney (Roo) also served in the war as a combat medic in Africa and Italy, where he participated in the Anzio invasion. Some say that he coined the “check out your mother” advice when he was at City News but there are a lot of conflicting claims about that. I recall that he was filling in as night city editor when I regrettably wrote “Chicagoland” in a story instead of Chicago area. Using Chicagoland, a word coined over at the Tribune, was at the Daily News “like shitting on the floor,” he informed me.
Tom Vickerman who labored for years as permanent as night city editor without much notice. He had the unenviable job of breaking in green reporters such as myself. Make an error in copy, and he would slowly turn his head and give you The Look. He never shouted, but it was like getting whipped. He was the only person in the entire newsroom who still was addressed as “Mr.”
There were plenty of other solid reporters and editors from whom I learned a lot about writing, accuracy and yes, objectivity and fairness. Lois Wille, Bill Newman, Harlan Draeger, Peter Lisagor and more. An honored and oldest foreign service. We prided ourselves on beating the Tribune to a story; the Trib’s staff was much larger than ours. Sadly the would all be considered unacceptable today by the oh-so-righteous “journalists” today. I knew that the end was approaching when word came down that the paper no longer would hire anyone without a college degree.
Great pantheon of worthies, Mr. Byrne! You are included.
I spent many days with Ray Coffey and this gentle . . . badass was a magnificent slinger of ink yarn spinner extraodinaire. I took him to Keegan’s Pub on Western Avenue where he immediately was welcomed by a score of Vietnam Veterans as their Ernie Pyle. I believe that is the only reporter who admitted into the Khe Sahn Society. He told stories about heroes for the parents of heroes. God rest his beautiful soul,
Chesterfields, Pall Malls, Lucky Strikes, Camels.
If you didn’t smoke unfiltered cigarettes in the 50’s/60’s you weren’t Kool. Later, when the clinical evidence established the linkage of cigarette smoking (first unfiltered, then any) to cancer , the public wised up. The incidence of cigarette smoking dramatically decreased, and so did the rate of lung cancer deaths. Given verifiable information, the American public can actually make intelligent decisions to their own betterment.
Those alive today avoided death by nicotine. Now we have to continue to fight against death by socialism/communism. I think the voting public made that better decision in 2024 when they elected Donald Trump. He is far from perfect as a role model, but he is a great advocate for America, Americans, and (mostly) free market capitalism. I pray to God that He gives POTUS Trump sustaining wisdom.
John does not like Soros. I cannot say I blame him. Soros is an oligarch. Oligarchs fund think tanks, even conservative ones. Oligarchs donate to politicians, even conservatives ones. Oligarchs pushed Citizens United, since then, it’s been Katy Bar The Door. It costs so much to run, you can have the best ideas, the best intentions, be of great character, and JB Pritzker can wipe the floor with you.
Since the election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008, the national debt has risen by about 30 TRILLION DOLLARS!. I think most of those in the Epstein files made out like bandits, not to mention most of the larger corporations, oligarchs, Israel, you do know the Pentagon hasn’t passed an audit in many years, don’t you? It’s trillions of dollars and they cannot account for it. And we shovel more to them every year.
I’m against ALL waste fraud and abuse, not just Democratic. Don’t you think Kash Patel, Bongino, Pam Bondi, have all clowned themselves. There are no files. Epstein killed himself in his jail cell, they release names and pictures of VICTIMS, and redact accused rapists!
You couldn’t write this shit. You have a lobbying organization AIPAC, who JFK wanted to have register as a foreign lobbying organization, they lobby for a foreign nation. JFK was for a 2 state solution. He said Jerusalem should be an international city. You saw what happened to JFK. I’m not sayin’ I’m just sayin’.
They sent ICE to dem cities and they shot a lesbian and a nurse. They make sure you k now she’s a lesbian so you dont have to care if she got capped. They make sure you see the video of the nurse kicking ICE car so you don’t care he got capped. Republicans say you should carry a licensed firearm to a protest, if you’re protesting ICE or any Republicans.
Now, they’re trying to say Epstein worked for Russia? AIPAC is spending big money to take out Thomas Massie, who is one of the best Congressmen we have.
We need public financing of campaigns, we need a real audit of the entire US government, not just some bullshit DOGE. Where is the money from that? The deficit is even bigger!
We need to empty out the nursing home that is the US Senate. WE need term limits.
You do know Scott Bessent worked for Soros. But we’re supposed to like him because he works for the Trump.
TDS is real DDS, Derangement Syndrome is real too. And the oligarch ghouls rely on it so we keep fighting. Taste their money for the campaigns, take the drug company money for your podcasts, website, ads, take the money for your Hoover foundation.
Just make sure you bend the knee for who they tell you to.
So everyone is bad except you, Robert? And only you are privy to the truth? Got it. You know something? You really are a full fledged sanctimonious gas bagging horse’s ass.
Nice goin John. I was looking forward to how things went at Hillsdale. Hope you discuss it on your podcast.
Years ago (2005 or so?) I was at a Chicago law firm interviewing a Northwestern law student who wanted to clerk for our firm. He had a journalism degree and had worked for a newspaper in DC. He wanted to convince me being a journalist made him suited to being a lawyer, and explained how when he was a reporter he would draft a story “and then go around trying to find evidence for it.” He figured that kind of biased evidence-gathering would make him a good lawyer.
The way he viewed his journalism job has stuck in my head as an indictment of what passes for “journalism” in this century. We need more John Kass types, but it’s fair to say we won’t find them in newspapers any more.