http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ro ... olumn.html

Rosenbloom writes an article about NCAA basketball in Illinois and makes 0 mention of LU.

_________________
Cigarboy sucks!

I think it's "so cute" that this guy thinks newspapers are still relevant.

It's funny that someone who is in a position of power to expose people to local college basketball programs and make them accessible and relevant to people in the area makes statements like these. His indifference and unwillingness to engage in coverage of the local basketball programs is the problem. He might as well write a column about how bad he sucks at his job...

The familiar dissing, ignoring of LUC in this snide bit of pseudo-journalism made me angry, so I submitted a comment as did Brot, the senior and eloquent Ramblermaniac.

I was wrong. Loyola only got one sentence in the Tribune print edition. The Illini get destroyed and get a whole article (autopsy?). Notre Dame didn't even play and they got an article. The Irish will have several days to shine over the next two weeks. Tim Beckman caught heat a few months ago when he said the negative attention that the media gives Illini football is hurting his ability to recruit. The media responded by saying, "Just win and we will give you positive publicity." Loyola? We don't get any publicity. I get that it's the CBI. However, many successful programs began their runs in the CBI/CIT. I know this won't surprise the members on this board, but I was expecting more than 1 sentence.

Suggestion,
We should quit complaining about media that gives us no coverage. I think we show too much concern for their respect.
Truth will be told. They missed a really great LOCAL story because the are too lazy to get out and see
for themselves.
They will continue to become irrelevant and we KNOW where WE go for accurate information, and it's not local news or print.
The whole world will go the same way soon enough.
Let's take care of business, support the program, and the word will get out without these guys.
So lets move on and reward those who show interest and ignore those who don't.
Watching guys in the studio reading from a prompter doesn't warrant our attention either.
Lets move on and GO RAMBLERS

This is very true, even if the newspaper did a full page story on the Ramblers what could possibly be in there that we don't already know??? Same with the news, they could do five minutes on the Ramblers and we would not learn anything even remotely close to new information. Maybe it would help in spreading the word a bit, but keep winning and people will figure it out for themselves.

The way I think of it is that it's more spreading the word. Sure, folks may know that LU has a basketball team but they never hear about us. If they heard about us on a regular basis (and we're winning) maybe they say "Hey, you know. I'm gonna go check out a game." Even if it happens to .005% of the population, it's a good thing.

_________________
Cigarboy sucks!

ESPN did not even mention the game in its half hour updates all day. This is a chronic problem...someone needs to have the task of getting LU covered. THe Score has been good to us this year and I am guessing that Mike Mulligan at the SCORE is responsible...some of the other hosts are clueless. The overnight guy Les G. always talks about LU. But again we need some one who does not just makes information available but takes the responsibility to get the news out there

We are not mentioned in any of the scoreboard updates on The Score either. These people are supposed to follow local sports.. How hard is it to just say we won?

Things don't turn around overnight. The "Chicago media" created the lack of college sports coverage in the first place, when the Tribune systematically promoted the Big 10 over all other local colleges in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and early 70s. The Tribune gave awards for Big 10 Football and Basketball for 30+ years and deliberately (I'm not using hyperbole-- I mean deliberately) under-reported non-Big 10 college stories because it was their "brand" in local sports reporting. As other papers died out or cut costs, college sports coverage declined in general.

By the time DePaul made their Final Four appearance in 1979, the Tribune had dropped their policy of ignoring non-Big 10 schools. DePaul rode that coverage for years, while Loyola only had a few years of decent teams on the national level during the early 80s. But the promotion of the Big 10 kept going, and waned only to the point of local interest and budget cutbacks. Meanwhile, the coverage of other local teams declined with the primacy of newspapers themselves.

So for the Tribune to claim that no one in Chicago has interest in college sports is a bit like the kid who murdered his parents begging for mercy on account of being an orphan. They go out of their way to try to cover prep sports-- again, mostly as a branding mechanism. I can describe many other cynical news coverage tendencies by the Tribune, but I don't want to stray into politics and city/suburban squabbles.

What the Tribune is basically saying here is that "newsworthiness" is what their marketing and sales department says it is. Journalism and actual news takes the back seat. Is Chicago really different than a lot of other cities where college sports is a much bigger deal? I don't think so, other than the fact that the Tribune has made it part of their mission for decades to suppress college sports coverage (and resulting interest). Philadelphia, Washington, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Boston give a lot more coverage to college sports-- the only thing that makes Chicago different is that the Tribune makes excuses for their years of bad journalism into opinion columns.