'Sun-Times': Scoops Show Worth of For-Profit Newspaper Ownership Model

By: E&P Staff Two big scoops in the controversy surrounding U.S. Sen. Roland Burris demonstrate again that for-profit, competing daily newspapers are vital to a city's health, the Chicago Sun-Times says in an unsigned editorial Tuesday.

Chicago has two downsized dailies with financially ailing parents, but their hyper-completive newsrooms are the reason the city and state's much-discussed corruption is public knowledge, the tabloid maintains.

In recent days, the paper scored two scoops. First, it revealed that Roland Burris, appointed U.S. senator by disgraced Rod Blagojevich in his last days as governor, had filed an affidavit that suggested he misled the Illinois Senate about the circumstances of his appointment during that impeachment trial. The second, appearing Monday, reported that Burris filed the affidavit to change the testimony days after he was contacted by federal investigators.

"Our purpose here is only in passing to toot our own horn, as much fun as that is. Truth be told, the next big exclusive in this story might very well come from the Tribune or another paper," the Sun-Times said. "It has happened before, and it will happen again -- we break a story and the Trib tops us, or they break a story and we top them. Competition brings out the best in everybody. What matters most to the people of Chicago is that professional reporters are finding out stuff people ought to know."

With Sun-Times Media Group going through yet another substantial round of cost-cutting, and Tribune Co. in bankruptcy court, Chicago's dailies are hurting -- but the "old-fashioned two old-fashioned newspaper scoops serve as a reminder of what Chicago gains daily from being a hotly competitive, for-profit, two-newspaper town, in print and online."

"No army of bloggers, no TV or radio station, no nonprofit journalism collective, no foundation-supported task force of political and government reporters will ever do the job so well," the editorial says.

Read the entire editorial at the E&P Pub