Entries associated with the tag "Kevin Pang":

As someone said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." So there isn't much time to get this right. The legend of Katie Hamilton is closing fast.

Hamilton is the Tribune intern who starred in the take-that-Sam-Zell video that recently won a Sun-Times contest. After the Sun-Times ran a big story singing her praises, the Tribune gleefully revealed what was up. I posted an item on this blog trying to give credit to the actual schemers behind the caper, John Kass did the same thing and went into more detail in his Tribune column, and there were other efforts here and there to tell the tale and get the facts right. But on Sunday America's paper of record, the New York Times, ran a short piece in its baseball preview section (but not posted online, apparently) that said:

"With Sam Zell flirting with a new name for Wrigley Field, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a contest encouraging fans to produce music videos in protest. The winner was Katie Hamilton, a student at the University of Illinois and a Chicago Tribune intern, who rewrote the lyrics to the 1984 Twisted Sister anthem, 'We're Not Gonna Take It.'" 

I guess this is what we all want to believe, and in the long run it may be what we all will. Says Hamilton, "That's definitely how it's come across -- that I concocted it and I ran with it. I wish I had." By her own admission, Hamilton didn't write a word -- "and I feel kind of bad because it's my face on the thing and it's Kevin who put together the gang." That's feature writer Kevin Pang, who by Hamilton's account got together with reporter James Janega and some other Tribune musical talent "and jammed and came up with the lyrics."

Hamilton was chosen to front the stunt because nobody at the Sun-Times would know who she was, and when you watch the video you'll see her happily strutting her stuff in front of the camera. "It was awesome," she says. No legend's necessary.

Today was a great day to be young and a journalist in Chicago. (When's the last time anyone said that?)

The Sun-Times carried a big story announcing the winner of its "Zell No" video contest: 22-year-old Katie Hamilton of Glen Ellyn with "We're Not Gonna Change It," a rip on Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It." Then the Tribune gleefully revealed that Hamilton is a Tribune editorial board intern and the $1,000 prize is going to Chicago Tribune Charities. And then the Sun-Times conceded it had been "punk'd" in an updated story under the headline "The Tribune has a sense of humor: Who knew?"

The upshot: Zell's scheme to sell naming rights at Wrigley Field gets him booted around not just by the competition but by the Tribune staff too. The winning video shows up on the Web sites of both papers. Highlights: some guy in a Zell mask prancing around, the real Zell getting bleeped.  

The Sun-Times site now gallantly offers not just the Tribune's champion "Zell No" video but another that the paper concocted to revel in its coup, plus two runners-up and 20 other entries. Elaborate production values put the winner head and shoulders above the others, but all the ones I took time to look at have their moments. 

Excellent lyric from the winners:

It's where we do our boozin'
Where our team does its losin'
Now some rich dude, he wants a change. 
He'll name it after Old Style       
Or drugs for ills erectile     
Viagra Field sounds pretty strange.   

Even better lyric, from runner-up Joe Conick, 71, of Chicago. . . 

I see in you the epitome of selfish,
That face gives a hint of week-old shellfish.

Hamilton was fronting for some major Tribune talent. Bill Adee, the Trib's associate managing editor for innovation, says he, Tempo editor Tim Bannon, and feature writer Kevin Pang had already been kicking around the idea of doing "viral video projects--and kind of humorous ones." The last time they talked, there on the table was a copy of the Sun-Times calling for "Zell No" entries. A light bulb went on. Pang headed up the project, lyrics were a group effort. Because the Sun-Times was putting up videos as they came in, the Tribune forces had a good idea where the bar was set. Would you have kept the secret if you'd lost? I asked Adee. "Probably," he said.

"We're fortunate to still be in a two-newspaper town," Adee told me. "It's old-time newspaper fun, in kind of a new-media age."