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Half a lifetime ago in Chicago

Sometimes I wonder if Leon Durham saved my life by breaking Chicago’s heart.

In October, 1984, you see, I was deputy sports editor at the Tribune, and sometimes it seemed like there was an impossible amount of planning and work to do — because we were covering an impossible number of great sports stories.

Walter Payton of the Bears was on the verge of breaking Jim Brown’s NFL career rushing…

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#Chicago Tribune #Cubs #World Series

20 years on, and the river runs to us

It was May 16, 1996. I was riding the Metra train to downtown Chicago when, as I have written before, somewhere south of Northbrook I had my first encounter with the future of American shopping.

Of course, since my iPhone was still 11 years in the future, the event in question was not a retail transaction; it was a Page 1A story in The Wall Street Journal about Amazon.com and its founder, Jeffrey…

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#Amazon #books

When Jack Fuller spoke (and wrote), people listened

A common first impression of Jack Fuller was that he was soft-spoken. But once anyone started listening to him, it was the message, not the decibel level, that remained at the forefront of memory,

Anecdote: It was January 2010, in the first of his regular appearances in one of my Medill graduate courses for a discussion of his then-about-to-be-published book, “What Is Happening to…

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#Chicago Tribune #Jack Fuller #journalism #obituaries

Click here to say "happy birthday"

Click here to say “happy birthday”

I share a birthday with the Chicago Tribune’s Lara Weber, and throughout the Facebook era we have been comparing data on the greetings that arrive via digital and analog channels. This week she offered me the chance to update my thoughts about it in the pages of the newspaper, so herewith a link, an image of the page (above), and the actual data (below).

Yes, I guess this is a cheap way to…

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#birthdays #Chicago Tribune #Facebook

One of the projects I'm working on

Why would we keep them down on the farm?

In 1928, Carl Sandburg – under the heading “Tentative (First Model) Definitions of Poetry” in his collection “Good Morning, America” – included this as No. 36 of 38 definitions: “Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.”

Twenty years later, the 70-year-old Sandburg still liked that definition enough to give a lecture for the students of North ParkJunior College in…

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#education #North Park #Wausa

How we all got digital (cont.)

chicago.tribune.com Version 1, from the first media kit. The emphasis was utility; the plan was for interactivity, multimedia, and revenue; and the goals were to teach and to learn. By the time we launched, “help,” “register,” and “feedback” had moved to the masthead.

For a luncheon souvenir booklet 10 years ago, I wrote this:

“[On March 14, 1996], chicago.tribune.com served up 31,001 HTML pages…

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#Chicago Tribune #chicagotribune.com

These 11 Amazing Sound Bites about the Tribune and Sun-Times Will Turn You into a Chicago Media Expert

Last Thursday, people in the Chicago media business had some news to make them sit up straight, if not stand up and run screaming from the room.

Michael Ferro, whose investment group Wrapports took control of the Sun-Times in 2011, closed a deal to become the largest shareholder in Tribune Publishing, owner of the Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, and many other titles.

Including, not…

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#Chicago Sun-Times #Chicago Tribune

Hitting the books again

This weekend I’ll be back at the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Lit Fest for a conversation with two of my favorite interviews from past years, Garry Wills (above left in 2008) and Martin Marty (above right in 2011; both photos from C-SPAN). The topic at 1 p.m. at Grace Place (tickets required)is “The Future of Pope Francis,” the jumping-off point and focus provided by Wills’ recent book of…

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Opening a Chicago time capsule

A window to the Chicago of 1987

Examining time capsules long has fascinated the people who find them. In January of this year, for example, there was quite a foofaraw in Boston over the second opening of a capsule that was placed in the Massachusetts State House dome by Samuel Adams and Paul Revere in 1795. Earlier this week, the CBS Television Networks launched a new channel, Decades, that Rober…

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Google Glass and Apple Watch, compared

Google Glass and Apple Watch, compared http://owenyoungman.com/2015/04/29/google-glass-v-apple-watch

For the second time since 2013, I’m having the opportunity for a series of conversations with random strangers around a piece of consumer technology.

Back then, it was Google Glass, and the conversations usually went like this:

“Are those the Google glasses? . . . No way. Are you recording me? . . . Oh, okay. How do you like them?”

These days, it’s the Apple Watch, and the conversations are…

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#Apple Watch #Google Glass

Paving the road to the Web (or just spreading gravel)

On Jan. 19, 1995, I called to order the first meeting of a 10-person Chicago Tribune committee charged by our bosses with figuring out the Internet.

By March 29 … yes, just twenty years ago … we were done.

(Must have been the head start: Since 1992, the company had been running Chicago Online, a service on America Online that was about to become profitable … thanks to the number of hours…

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The third time, but the first time too

On Monday, October 6, the classroom doors will swing open for the third session of my Coursera MOOC, “Understanding Media by Understanding Google.” I was just comparing the syllabi for this session and the first one, which launched in September of 2013, for a reality check on whether I’ve been keeping it current. Out of 70 links to videos, news articles, and blog posts in the weekly readings, 23…

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