Sunday's best?

By Geoff Dougherty | Oct 06, 12:08 PM

The true test of a newspaper has always been the Sunday edition.

It's the one people have the most time to read, and the one journalists have the most time to report and write.

A good Sunday paper provides a mix of thought-provoking enterprise reporting, lively features -- and, of course, news about whatever happened on Saturday.

That's not what subscribers of the Tribune saw when they picked up yesterday's metro section.

This was a news section that I, in all likelihood, could have written, reported, photographed and edited singlehandedly in the course of a day or two. And I'm not boasting about my journalism chops.

There ain't nothing in it.

The Trib ran two items on the metro front, and neither of them was a news story.

One was a column by Mary Schmich. Fine -- she's always been a great read. But I'm pretty sure she'd agree her musings are best consumed in the company of actual news.

The second item, which ran under a ginormous photo and headline of two old folks (if you thought being old and sitting around at home was boring, try looking at a photo of it), was a lead-in to an inside story about seniors' mounting medical bills.

But wait ... flip inside, and it's actually not a story. It's three 200-word snippets on individual seniors and their finances. 

Rounding out this heavyweight journalism effort are four news briefs, a rewrite of a press release on the city's pedestrian boulevards program, and a short feature on gardens in Cabrini Green.

And, of course, a huge chart on where Cubs fans are getting their tickets.

If you had any doubt about the purpose of the Trib's redesign, Sunday should clear things up. The huge section headers, Kansas-sized charts and billboard photos are camouflage, designed to hide the fact that there's no actual news in the paper.

Tagged: media, Chicago Tribune