'Sun-Times': Cancel That Left Turn (won't be going liberal)

[Newsjock]

Source: Editor & Publisher

Conrad Black, who led the thieving band of executives that put the Chicago Sun-Times pretty far down the road to ruin, had just been convicted in a Chicago federal courthouse, but Publisher John Cruickshank had something more urgent to talk about Friday afternoon in the tabloid's offices.

"We're not going to start being a Democratic paper or a liberal paper or a conservative paper or an ideological paper -- we're an independent paper," he said. "We're not going to be a small L liberal paper. We're not going to bind ourselves to a party or ideology in anything."

On Tuesday, the Sun-Times launched a redesigned commentary section with this ringing declaration by new Editorial Page Editor Cheryl L. Reed: "We are returning to our liberal, working-class roots, a position that pits us squarely opposite the Chicago Tribune -- that Republican, George Bush-touting paper over on moneyed Michigan Avenue. We're rethinking our stance on several issues, including the most pressing issue facing Americans today: Bush's war in Iraq."

... But its all a misunderstanding, the paper says now.

In a column in Sunday's editions, Reed writes, "the word liberal carries a lot of baggage, so I'm discovering."

She added she had "no intention of driving this paper down some partisan path."

Read more: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003611781