DNAinfoChicago R.I.P.: Ye Hardly Knew Ye.

I read DNAinfoChicago from the get-go.   It was, at first. a great news aggregate that offered local coverage.

I gotta go with Joe about its demise, Joe Ricketts, that is, the Cubs' Grandpa, “And while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasn’t been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded.”

News coverage of local events became less devout and political hack-work seemed to ooze from every column.

DNAinfoChicago somehow morphed into the detested MEDIA.  Same old, same old.

Solid writers like Mark Schipper and Ed Komenda disappeared and activist group-think writers dominated the coverage.

Most telling for me was the awful coverage of the idiot who pulled a gun on people after he was asked to not block the entrance of the firehouse on 111th Street.

The idiot was shot and killed, when he aimed his weapon at people.

The idiot had been celebrating a relative's funeral by weaving in and out of the heavily trafficked lanes of 111th Street, the commercial district for the Mount Greenwood neighborhood.  Traffic stalled and the Hossier Hothead acted out with his weapon and his mouth.

I had had my haircut on the site of the violence and where the dope met his demise, only an hour before the folly.

However, DNAinfoChicago  reporters, Joe Ward especially. conflated identity politics, race-baiting and social justice warfare with what had taken place - Marist high school was placed in the cross-hairs and community scab-yanking over imagined and occasionally accurate racism became the menu all of the month of November 2016, until the facts un-Pflegered the story.  Joe Ward never once considered covering the Revolutionary Communist Party's orchestration of the post shooting protests.  That would have chopped his narrative.


The DNAinfo Joshua Beal mythology can be found here, because the archived yarns are shut down.
Joe Ricketts owned the site and Gothamist and decided to close shop.

Conflated coverage of the news is what the detested American media is all about.  People want to know what is happening in their neighborhoods.  DNAinfoChicago tried to do that and ended up being another detested outlet for prefabricated opinions.

The Sun Times, owned by the public service unions, did a hit piece on the news of DNAinfoChicago's demise, not unlike the covergae of the late Mr. Beal:

A week before the shutdown, the Gothamist and DNAinfo newsrooms in New York voted to join the Writers Guild of America East, which released a statement Thursday saying “it is no secret that threats were made to these workers during the organizing drive.”
In a September post entitled “Why I’m Against Unions At Businesses I Create,” Ricketts wrote on his personal blog of his belief “that unions exert efforts that tend to destroy the Free Enterprise system.”
“I believe unions promote a corrosive us-against-them dynamic that destroys the esprit de corps businesses need to succeed,” Ricketts wrote. “And that corrosive dynamic makes no sense in my mind where an entrepreneur is staking his capital on a business that is providing jobs and promoting innovation.”
According to a New York Times report, 115 reporters from the websites who are now out of a job will receive three months of paid “administrative leave” at their full salaries, along with four weeks of severance pay.

Joe Ricketts was right.   Joe Ricketts gave his employees a pretty decent severance package.  More than an SEIU janitor can expect when all of the public funding has dried up.

So, we say goodbye to DNAinfoChicago.  Goodbye.

Thanks for the shot at news coverage Joe Ricketts.  It was appreciated by people like me, until the good writers disappeared.

Next time you set up shop, hire writers and tell the 'journalists' to get a union card and get fitted for a purple T-shirt.

DNAinfo Chicago Runs Free Political Ads for Illinois' U.S. Senators Double Ds

 Old Aeschylus knew war.

The media is at War with President Trump and it will take no prisoners.

Whatever.  A fun read is becoming as tiresome as SNL and the two Chicago dailies.

The Double D brand has been burned into the hide of DNAinfo Chicago.  That is too bad, because the otherwise entertaining and marginally informative 'neighborhood news' site, has been turned into yet another propaganda sheet for Illinois Oligarchs.

DNAinfo Chicago features two of Chicago's most honest, witty and ethical writers - Mark Schipper and Eddie Komenda.  These gentlemen present the news and the background a Chicagoan requires, without the mewling belly-rubs by power brokers required of too many in journalism. Sadly, the need to divide, silence and besmear people with differing political points of view erases their quality work.  Cow-Towing to oligarchs is becoming a regular feature.

Durbin and his creature Duckworth are Double D Industries.  A double dose of fatuous bargainers, representing Illinois in the 'greatest deliberative body' on the planet.  You know the one where recently Senate Majority Leader Yertle the Turtle hushed up the Socialist Saccagewea.

For the better part of a month DNAinfo has posted this Barnum-esque bunkum:

See How Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth Vote On Trump's Cabinet Picks

Wow!  See -Hercules Defeat the Minotaur!  See - Moses Part Donald's Weave!

Got it!  Every rag in this hick burg, delighted to be lorded over by jerks, cretins, grifters and well-healed oligarchs, begins and ends each day with a list of Trump Thumping nonsense that no one reads.

The Chicago Sun Times and Tribune can not cover Chicago high school sports with anything  resembling competence, but will crow like starlings in Bridgeport about its hard-hitting political coverage and ignore the daily thievery and bullying emanating from execrable City Hall and the egregious County Building.

Now, DNAinfo is a full time propaganda slinger.  Well, old Aeschylus also seems to have advised our 21st Century ink-slingers and nodders in his play Agamemnon - Do not kick against the pricks.

Much safer. 

Chicago - Untouched by Change: Media, Politics and Bad Activists Doing Just Fine

I live in the only city and county completely unaffected by the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency.  I live in Chicago, Cook County of Illinois.

Every incumbent and sanctioned candidate held onto or won public office. Same old, same old. In fact, a clerk who pretended to be a judge was elected to be a judge.  What could possibly go wrong there?

The tide, turned in by the votes and the Electoral College, missed the shores of Lake Michigan entirely.

On election day, my Ward, the 19th, which includes a neighborhood known as Mount Greenwood and home to a great many Chicago police officers and firefighters, became a racial flash point.

On the Saturday afternoon(Nov. 5th) before the election, at about 3PM members of a family that had buried a young man at Mount Hope Cemetery in this Ward travelled west on 111th Street, a two lane shopping district with barbershops, restaurants, boxing gyms, banks, dentist offices, a Walgreen's and other local concerns.  This is a two lane street with parking available on both side.  At Troy Street is a Chicago Firehouse. People in a hurry attempt to make a new right lane and cause accidents, traffic jams and on this Saturday a fatality.

Beal and others had just left a funeral in several cars and were driving to their next destination when the incident occurred, Beal’s relatives said. According to Guglielmi*, they were stopped in traffic near a firehouse when an off-duty Chicago firefighter saw one of the vehicles and notified the driver that it was illegally blocking the fire lane and causing delays. 

The firefighter then began arguing with three people who got out of their cars, said Guglielmi. While this was going on, a woman inside a nearby business saw the argument, called police and then became involved in the fight, the police spokesman said.

At this point, an off-duty Chicago police officer in a barbershop nearby also spotted the fight, approached the scene, identified himself as an officer and became involved in the brawl, Guglielmi said.

A sergeant in full uniform who was driving to work at the Morgan Park Police District then stopped when he saw the melee, the spokesman said.

“There’s a sergeant on his way to work. He now sees a man with a gun in his hand. He gets out, announces his office in full uniform,’’ Guglielmi said.

The sergeant displayed his weapon, Guglielmi said. As the incident escalated and the man with the gun did not drop his weapon, shots were fired, and the man was hit multiple times, the police spokesman said. Chicago Tribune

The man, Joshua Beal died.  He pulled a gun, waved it, pressed the trigger and was shot multiple times.

Immediately the story became a narrative - one that erased the culpability of Mr.Beal and his family altogether. One of the most egregious narratives was written by a man named Davis Steiber and printed in the dubious Huffington Post. 

Joshua Beal, who was in Chicago for a funeral, was killed Saturday by a Chicago police sergeant. The reason an off-duty police officer felt the need to start waving his gun around and pointing it at a lot of different people is baffling. To see the video, click here.

I, however, don’t want to focus on the killing itself ― I want to focus on the reaction of white people. Specifically in Mount Greenwood, where the incident occurred. Last night, hours after his death, while people gathered to support Josh’s family, some residents of Mount Greenwood came out of their homes with Blue Lives Matter flags to apparently show that Black people are not welcome in Mount Greenwood. Instead of letting people grieve the loss of a life, these white residents thought it appropriate to call them names and tell them to leave “their” neighborhood. To see this video click here.

As is the case in most police related shootings, the media twist the facts, invent the facts and turn the attendant hate on people who have done nothing to warrant a raised eyebrow let alone anger.

A local media news site, DNAinfo Chicago, which had up until this shooting in Mount Greenwood been dependable with reporting and has three very fine writers in Mark Schipper, Ed Komenda and Pulitzer Prize winning Mark Konkol, took up group thought and malicious slandering of people in order to whip up a controversy.

Three writers have crafted the Mount Greenwood Narrative.

Immediately after the shooting members of REVCOM Chicago - the Revolutionary Communist Party - sent teams of activists to the neighborhood.

DNAinfo Chicago's three reporters (Evan Moore, Joe Ward and Howard Ludwig)  have yet to mention this fact and have all but erased the crimes of Saturday the 5th by Beal and family in a sad attempt to make the 'manufactured outrage' appear spontaneous, genuine and heartfelt.  Outrage is directed against the neighborhood of Mount Greenwood, Marist Hig School and a few teenage girls unaware that texting matters.  REVCOM, along with Moveon.org has been identified by law enforcement as forces behind protests and riots around the nation.  REVCOM boasts to its retainers.

When we heard about this outrage, the Revolution Club went to the scene, arriving in the early evening. We found members of Joshua’s family sitting in a Mt. Greenwood Burger King—unable to leave because police had surrounded their cars as part of the “crime scene.” A Club member explained to the family members who we were, and we began talking with them. Already grieving for the loss of one loved one who had been buried that day, this family was now dealing with the murder of another—shot down in front of their eyes by Chicago police.

The family members told us stories of being taunted by racists in Mt. Greenwood. They had been called “n****rs” and “monkeys” and were told to “go back to the ‘hood” by white people shouting from their cars as they drove by. 

The Revolution Club brought a Stolen Lives banner into the BK and unfurled it. Many family members gasped, as they looked at the faces of so many others murdered by police. At this point, the Burger King manager announced that the family would have to leave the restaurant. This callous racism was called out by the grieving family members and people from the Club. “This is not Mississippi in 1960. This is 2016.” “They are afraid of too many Black people in this place.” Everyone stood firm, saying, “We paid for food and we aren’t leaving.”

The manager called in the police. The police arrived in force, further crowding the Burger King. They ordered everyone to leave, announcing that the BK was closing its doors early. People were forced outside into the dark and the cold without coats or sweaters.

DNAinf Chicago has printed photos of REVCOM as well as Black Lives Matter, activists Ja'Mal Beal, Jedidiah Brown and the egregious Pastor Michael Pfleger.  However there is no mention of the Communists who sparked riots and violence in Milwaukee only this past summer.

More troubling, DNAinfo Chicago managed to get a high school girl's Twitter tweet that was racially offensive and managed to get the girl and five other of her friends from a Catholic High School after Archbishop Blase Cupich was contacted for comments in keeping with this divisive and inflammatory narrative.

The narrative has erased the story of Joshua Beal's bad behavior, illegal use of a hand gun, threatening the lives of Chicago Police Officers and bystanders and morphed into the very reasons why Donald Trump appealed to voters.

I live in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois - the land untouched by change.  The message sent to the American elites is lost here.  The people get it.  The elites do not.

Same old, same old.


* Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi

Alderman Anti-Politics, DNAinfo's Ted Cox and Grassroots Collaborative Cover Rahm's Retreat

  ' . . .   impoverished black families don’t want white people and bourgeois African-Americans lecturing them about fatherhood." Mary Mitchell Chicago Sun Times

Mmmm! Mmm!~ Mmmm!  Chicago Sun Times Mary Mitchell is angry . . .24/7.

Rahm Emanuel was bullied away from holding a mirror up to the root problems determining Chicago's ever-soaring Black on Black killings ,  You know all that racist myth spouting about Fatherless Families.

Rahm was bullied by Mary Mitchell, the wired-in community clergy and of course Chicago's Regular Democratic Activists.

Read what Rahm hath wrought - post skulk of course.

So, Rahm invited only nice and compliant, but really, really, really concerned Goo-goos and Alder-critters, to his latest PPPP Preacherized Pistol Philippic* at Malcolm X college on the West Side.  

DNA info Chicago's Ted Cox is always nice and compliant. He knew that Rahm would not criticize the African American Community, Family, or  Individuals - No Way and No How.  Therefore, Ted Cox appeared to be fully fully-loaded to have other nice, compliant and really, really concerned person to off Progressive narratives on Rahm's crawfish far from the core issues.

Ted had Alderman Ameya Pawar of the 47th Ward.  Ald. Pawar is "anti-politics Alderman". In Chicagese, an ineffective gasbag loved by the press and Channel 11.

Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th) challenged the factual basis for the "myth" of the fatherless African-American family."I don't know that we'd go to . . .

Now this is Beautiful!

. . . Appalachia and talk about absent parents," Pawar said. "If we're going to be serious about talking about what's going on with families in poor communities, the mass incarceration has to be at the top of the list, and a failed war on drugs."

Forgive Ameya, Chicago; he is an Alderman and prone to saying really dumb things and added to the fact that he is the Anti-politics Alderman.  Well . . . knowing that Ted Cox trotted out an Activist from Grassroots Collaborative ( love that Lefty Lingo)

"I think the mayor should focus on economic policy," said Amisha Patel, executive director of the Grassroots Collaborative. "Blaming fathers and blaming families for crime is really disingenous. (sic)"

Hey, Alderman Appalachia is no Englewood.

IN Appalachia, the majority of families living in poverty are headed by married couples.
Poverty rates in Appalachia's rural counties far exceed the poverty rates in metro areas.
In part, these patterns reflect the lower levels of racial and ethnic diversity in the region, but they also reflect the low wages and lack of jobs in remote, rural areas.

Gee, the same . . .but really different!  And this is from social science, Progressives!

Who is being disingenuous?  You, Miss Grassroots Collaborative, Alderman Anti-Politics and Ted Cox. Yeah Ted, Alderman Anti-politics challenged the hell out of  the factual basis for the "myth" of the fatherless African-American family.  "We have a lot of corporate philanthropy and corporate activism that we need to tap into," he said.

Yet Pawar warned that "philanthropy lets rich people choose what's worthy and what's not," and instead urged the mayor to act as a "counterbalance" to Gov. Bruce Rauner, "a guy who is cutting programs [and] basically destroying what little safety net there is in Illinois."

Pawar went on to say that "a counterbalance to that is a strong mayor who's going to say this is wrong," adding, "We have a moral imperative to tax appropriately and serve everyone."

The nice and compliant Ted Cox concludes not with Retreating Rahm but Alderman Anti-politics on the grift for himself and Grassroots Collaborative

"We have a lot of corporate philanthropy and corporate activism that we need to tap into," he said.
Yet Pawar warned that "philanthropy lets rich people choose what's worthy and what's not," and instead urged the mayor to act as a "counterbalance" to Gov. Bruce Rauner, "a guy who is cutting programs [and] basically destroying what little safety net there is in Illinois."
Pawar went on to say that "a counterbalance to that is a strong mayor who's going to say this is wrong," adding, "We have a moral imperative to tax appropriately and serve everyone."

And that will end Gun Violence!  

There is no such thing as Gun Violence.  There is violence caused by people - demographics - you know, Voters. 

Alderman Anti-politics, Chicago!  He'll be back!  

Rahm stays fetal - It's all good!

*policing, prevention, penalties and parenting - well maybe not parenting.
   

The Lion Queen - Master Teacher Aurora Latifi of Leo High School

This lovely Albanian Lass has the Lions eating out of the palm of her hands!

Mr. Wendell Hudson, a class act of DNA Chicago ( home to Pulitzer Prize Icon Mark Konkol) came out to Leo High School recently to do a feature on our Lion Queen - Aurora Latifi.  This young math teacher has changed the lives of scores of willful young men.  Boys are not easy to teach . . .anything and must be met where they are in this awkward and challenging stage of development - one minute they are trying to download pictures of naked women and in an instant very much concerned about Sponge Bob's most recent predicament.

I am amazed at the talented women Leo High School students have as mentors and instructors - Cristine Meany, also a math teacher, tutors Miles Turner who is making miraculous progress recovering from five bullets.  These young ladies have much more command presence and command of their disciplines than many of the males who have run screaming like kittens on fire from the onerous work of teaching young men. " I CAN'T TEACH THESE KIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  Alpha Mike Foxtrot, Cup Cake!

Aurora Latifi is a Master ( m.gender) Teacher.

AUBURN GRESHAM — Aurora Latifi grew up wanting to be an engineer in her native Albania, but the government wouldn't allow her to, so she settled on teaching.

Latifi, 49, says now she has no regrets about going into teaching, and the move turned out to be good news for students at Leo Catholic High School on the South Side, where Latifi got a job after moving to America 12 years ago.

"She is a wonderful teacher and an asset to this school," said Dan McGrath, president of Leo, an all-boys school founded in 1926. "She really cares about her students, which is why she arrives early and leaves late. Her willingness to go that extra mile for students is what makes her so effective as a good teacher."

Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130318/auburn-gresham/leo-high-school-teacher-makes-her-mark-adopted-country#ixzz2Nu75T2HG

Thanks DNA CHICAGO and to you Mr. Hudson!