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The article about Tribune Co from the NY Times, going over the excesses and problems that existed in the organization made for some chuckle worthy reading. Was all of it true? Not likely. Was a lot of it? Certainly. More than that, it’s funny to read about a dying industry digging itself to the grave.

And of course I’m aware of the irony of that statement.

Regardless, I see this post this morning defending the Tribune, linked to from Roger Ebert.

Now, I like Roger Ebert. I think he’s inspiring as a writer and a critic. But this article? It made me laugh for all the wrong reasons.

Five years ago I wrote a post about what I’d do if I bought a newspaper. A lot of it centered around streamlining, getting off ivory towers and reengaging with the community. Now some choice quotes from this Tribune apologist post:

Each morning for more than 25 years now, as I come to work at the Chicago Tribune, I engage in a private ritual.

Standing on Michigan Avenue, I look up at the magnificentTribune Tower and feel a mixture of awe and pride.

Really? Awe and pride? I’m all for the power of media to be transformative. However, the tower of Tribune is no longer a symbol of power, but a symbol of disconnection. Kass continues to talk about the building as if it is a temple to all that we should hold sacred about the media’s role in society. Maybe, but that temple has been deconstructed. We’re no longer the loose knit graph around the hub of major media.

A decentered world has no place for stone towers.

And then the kicker:

Chicago Tribune reporters work in difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions. They do not blog from mommy’s basement, cutting and pasting what others have reported, while putting it under a cute pen name on the Internet.

Oh, I see. So bloggers are really just overgrown adolescents who type furiously on dirty keyboards, in stained sweatpants while their mothers yell at them to take the trash out already. Never mind the transformative power of decentered journalism (a less perjorative term than “bloggers” I think).

There is no doubt that the leveling of the playing field for what it takes to be a journalist has beget the world with charlatans, and 500 reader William Randolphs. But the beauty of the complexity of the new media world is that what fights through the weight of the normal, what rises above the collective din, is inspiring and I would argue more relevant than the daily content on dead tress from stone towers.

So when we stand out on Michigan Avenue, looking up at the tower, we’re not looking at some frat house.

We’re looking at our Tribune.

Sorry Mr. Kass, but you’re also looking at a crumbling vestige of a world that has passed you by, on the very street you are now vacating.