Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”–one of the Art Institute’s classics–needs more diverse docents to explain this masterpiece.

Even the New York Times thinks it’s a story, but you didn’t. Why?

Maybe being safely ensconced in Jacksonville, Florida, I missed the wall-to-wall coverage by the Chicago media of the firing of the supposedly privileged, old while women docents by the Art Institute of Chicago.

It’s been about a month since the issue was revealed in a Chicago Tribune letter-to-the-editor, followed on Sept. 27 by a scathing Chicago Tribune editorial criticizing the action. WBEZ soon reported the story.

But the Chicago media in general have ignored the story or have come to it inexcusably late. Weeks went by without a mention of the racially charged action aimed at the docents who are mostly white and who have the time and the resources to volunteer, as they have been doing for some 60 years.

The conservative media, of course, picked up the story–which is right in their wheelhouse–and spread it nationally. The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal ran stories. I posted it on my blog on Sept. 28. At this writing, it has prompted some 50,000 reads from across America and even internationally–a remarkable number for my humble blog.

By any measure, it is a local story that has gone national, one that a rookie reporter would recognize for its newsworthiness.

But not in Chicago, where the newspapers and other media have become a nearly invisible shadow of their former selves when Chicago was known as the best newspaper town in America.

The absence of locally produced coverage in the Tribune’s news pages is baffling. Neil Steinberg at the Chicago Sun-Times finally grabbed the controversy as an opportunity to pitch his next book, while describing the museum’s targeting of white women as a “stumble, due to carelessness more than anything else.” Move along, not much to see here.

If the local media needed a nudge, the New York Times finally gave it to them in “Art Institute of Chicago Ends a Docent Program, and Sets Off a Backlash.” The Tribune picked it up, based on the idea that it’s best to cover Chicago from New York. USA TODAY finally chimed in today. Crain’s Chicago Business finally did yesterday.

For the life of me, I can’t imagine what has caused the Chicago media to shrivel into a faint resemblance of real journalism. Let me try to put myself in the place of the editors and reporters who have ignored the story. Of course, I’m assuming that the Chicago media know what’s going on their own backyard.

Steinberg over at the Sun-Times helped me out. Explaining why he “initially ignored” the story, he said because:

… Red Staters try to blind America to its racist past, labeling honest assessment of history as “critical race theory” and banning it by law, they seek cover by cherry-picking tales of cancel culture overreach, mostly from academia, to pretend that they are victims. Why amplify that?

In other words, I’ve decided that I’m not giving voice to the other side, a side that I’ve decided is racist, blah and blah. Of course, as a columnist, that’s his prerogative. He does a good job at it.

But that doesn’t explain why the news side ignored the story–unless it does.

Okay, I’m the city editor and the docent story comes to my attention. How do I evaluate whether to assign a reporter to cover it?

Maybe I spike it because what happens to a bunch of old white women doesn’t matter. Who cares?We’re on the side of Black Lives Matter, so we’re not running anything that doesn’t support its agenda.A story about docents is elitist. Most docents come from the suburbs. That’s not our readership.Conservatives think it’s a good story. We don’t like conservatives.We don’t have enough reporters to cover it.Art Institute brass explained why they’re doing it, therefore it isn’t a story. We don’t have enough room in the paper.

Maybe there are more excuses; these range from arguable to simply moronic. You can’t argue that the story is uninteresting; the huge readership across the country challenges that blind excuse. If you’re interested in building readership, you’ll find a reporter and space in the paper to run it.

I fear the other reasons are more likely to explain the absence of coverage. Clear evidence of bias. Of your inability to understand your readers and what they want. Of the suicidal path that the media have taken for the sake of a one-sided cause. Look to yourself to find one reason for the no-longer viability of your profession.

As disturbing as is the Chicago media’s silence about the story, is the silence of the practitioners, colleague, critics and actual journalists in Chicago who are untroubled by the redefinition of journalism as apostolic conveyors of a political and world view. Where are the professional journalism societies? Where are the gatekeepers who annually reward journalists who have excelled?

Chicago once had a regular media critic–Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader. Maybe there’s still one around that I haven’t noticed; my apologies. Miner viewed the media from a consistently and sometime troubling liberal orthodoxy. Yet his presence was a regular reminder that journalism was supposed to be a profession, rather than a megaphone for one or another particular interest.

That view now seems totally abandoned. And the losers, besides themselves, are the people who deserve to be well–and fully–informed.

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