Earlier this month, a well-known community blogger in Chicago quit his paid post as an online news writer for local NBC station WMAQ after executives from both the Chicago Tribune and WMAQ itself interceded to block the posting of verified news stories. The scribe in question, Steve Rhodes, editor and publisher of popular Windy City local blog the Beachwood Reporter, writes that twice in December, fully cited news stories based on verified sources and including previously reported facts were blocked from publication by the news station.

According to Rhodes, WMAQ management told him the first story, reporting embarrassing details about incoming Chicago Tribune chairman Randy Michaels (see a cache of the story here), was pulled off the live site at the request of Tribune management who feared the story would create bad press for the newspaper. (How bad? One verified fact in Rhodes original story was Michaels' penchant for walking around the offices of a previous employer with a rubber penis hanging around his neck.) A second story examining the recent death of Chicago Board of Education chair Michael Scott never even reached the public--Rhodes was told an executive at WMAQ unhappy with press coverage of former friend Scott had the story quashed before publication.

When word of the controversy hit the online news sphere in Chicago, it prompted several local bloggers to ask the question at the top of this post: Why, exactly, would a local TV station let a third-party print publication determine the acceptability--and reportability--of news content? The question is troubling for anyone who supports a free and unfettered news media. So is the fact that neither WMAQ nor the Tribune have denied Rhodes' report, which generated intense coverage from major Chicago online media outlets such as Chicagoist, the Chicago Reader, Vocalo, and Windy Citizen. 

Besides wondering why any news outlet would remove or block a news story based on the personal concerns of internal managers--much less the business concerns of competing newspapers--news watchers should also be wondering how often this has happened before in Chicago or other major U.S. news markets. When the FCC first established limits on media ownership in local markets, it was to block seemingly collusive actions of the kind reported by Rhodes and ensure that major media companies would be unable to dominate and determine news content in a given city. Of course, FCC limits go out the window when independent news outlets let informal winks and handshakes determine appropriately controversy-free news content.

Most amazing, though, is that in this highly interactive day and age executives exist at NBC5 Chicago and the Chicago Tribune who still think it's possible for major media to block a story and the public to be none the wiser. That's a lot harder to do when many of the folks being hired to write online news content are major local bloggers with built-in online brands and audiences. Rhodes was far from the only self-branded blogger reporting online news for a major outlet--in Chicago or anywhere else. That WMAQ and the Tribune couldn't parse the ramifications of hiring and then censoring someone with his or her own major public soapbox speaks volumes about major media's understanding of the realities of life on the Interwebs. And not in a good way, either.

[Image source: Beachwood Reporter.]