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Things I totally didn't know were in the works: Cook County Magazine, Todd Stroger's latest self-defeating attempt to burnish his PR. From the cover it looks like O, The Oprah Magazine only with Todd Stroger instead of Oprah. Clearly I would pay any amount to subscribe to this, but it looks like I'll never get the chance: all 5,000 copies are in spokesman Eugene Mullins's office and it looks like they'll go the way of the E.T. Atari game, because it sucks too much to show anyone:
The cover story is an interview with Stroger that starts by asking him, "How are you feeling these days?" There's also a short obituary for Stroger's late father and predecessor as county board president, John H. Stroger Jr., who died in January. It misspells his name.
Total cost of $24,999 with only three ads. The reason why it's a dollar less than $25K is so awesome, and by awesome I mean crushingly depressing, that I don't want to ruin the joke by explaining it, so click through (via Chicagoist).
Incidentally, I loved this quote:
"According to an agreement between the Stroger administration and Tracy obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, county officials were seeking a "non-threatening news environment that ensures regular, positive press -- to counter-balance negative press often found in the mainstream media.""
Once upon a time, we'd call that propaganda. It's also a nice way of re-capturing an important historical moment: the New Deal, which was very much about how information was produced and disseminated. The debate New Deal info policies sparked featured both a similar strategy of justification and similar degree of anxiety.
Graham White, FDR and the Press
Richard Steele, Propaganda in an Open Society: The Roosevelt Administration and the Media, 1931-1941.
Michael Sproule, Propaganda and Democracy
And Michael Stamm's incredibly interesting dissertation: "Mixed Media: Newspaper Ownership of Radio in American Politics and Culture, 1920--1952" (U of C, 2006. Full-text avail on Proquest).