Jack Conaty leaves WFLD

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Sad but true. One of the very few, perhaps truly the last good journalist at WFLD.

And then there were none........

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/...-22-years.html

[Telecine]

He was their local political reporter. Do they not think politics in Chicago is news? Was he really making the kind of money that made him expendable ? This makes no real sense but then again.....

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Originally Posted by Telecine

He was their local political reporter. Do they not think politics in Chicago is news? Was he really making the kind of money that made him expendable ? This makes no real sense but then again.....

Not much that goes on at WFLD these days makes a lot of sense. My guess is they simply want to do away with all of the "old guard" people and replace 'em with young, stupid kids who will work themselves to death for minumum wage and put a crap product on the air, while the company saves money in the process.
I seriously doubt they care much about good political reporting anymore. Now we get to listen to Tera Williams insulting the Mayor and Jan Jeffcoat's horribly republican-biased political views. And when you're tired of that you can watch the ridiculous 4 minute fluff pieces that run in their 9pm news from Mark Saxenmeyer.
I'm sure in some respects Jack is glad to be done with that place. I wouldn't be surprised to see him turn up as a political consultant around town. He's a brilliant man when it comes to Chicago politics and while he's never afraid to ask tough questions of his subjects he has always been a gentleman in the process.
People who want good reporting and political coverage will simply turn elsewhere, and WFLD can continue to ram crap like endless cross-promotions of American Idol down everyone's throat and call it "news"

[Telecine]

You know what if they really want to save some money just eliminate the newscasts and run a few informercials.

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Originally Posted by Telecine

You know what if they really want to save some money just eliminate the newscasts and run a few informercials.

Watch more closely, between WFLD and WPWR they run quite a large number of infomercials right now. A fair percentage of what used to be WFLD's core syndicated programming now runs on WPWR to try and get its ratings up out of the cellar while more and more infomercials take their place on the WFLD side.

It's doubtful that in a market the size of Chicago that one major station would get out of the news business completely, simply too much competition. Unfortunately what the do instead is water down the product so badly that they might as well just run infomercials.