Council Coverage
Like any writers of consequence, reporters understand that the essence of their art is the leaving out.
Thus primed, Kass began his Tribune account the next morning with this: “A chance for Chicago residents to vote on Mayor Richard Daley’s plans for legalized gambling failed by one vote in Thursday’s City Council meeting, with Daley allies changing votes at the last minute to win.”
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Moore’s maneuver wasn’t all that flopped on October 7. It was a day when the City Council accomplished nothing. Alderman Helen Shiller also asked the council to suspend the rules; she wanted a vote on her plan to intervene in the school funding crisis. Shiller’s idea was to offer the mayor $16 million the city had saved by refinancing general-obligation bonds, money the mayor could apply as needed to cut a deal with the teachers’ union. The council shipped Shiller’s ordinance to committee.
“Du Sable Drive?” said the front page in big block letters, which were superimposed on a picture of the congested motorway at rush hour. Alongside Fran Spielman’s long discussion of the name change on page five was a profile of the French Haitian trader who built a cabin here in the late 1770s. And Morningline asked readers to call in and declare themselves.
The Tribune did not abet Du Sable frenzy. But as the midwest’s foremost monitor of international affairs, it couldn’t resist comment on the council’s foreign policy.
In the minds of some aldermen the same language describes the press. To Joe Moore, Preckwinkle’s Du Sable Drive proposal was “a silly story which nobody [on the council] made a big deal of. But Fran picked it up and decided to run with it.” Even Preckwinkle naively expected the press to lay off until the Transportation Committee held hearings. “I was astounded that it got any coverage at all,” she told us. “Given that the school crisis was immediate and the question of casino gambling was something I think citizens should have a chance to comment on, I was sort of astounded that the drive should get the play. Not that I don’t think changing the drive’s name is important, but what gets covered is interesting.”
Of course there’s a special reason he got a lot of calls. Weren’t you one of Preckwinkle’s cosponsors? we asked him.
