The Chicago Tribune Disappoints, but They Can’t Ruin Ruminato Customer Appreciation Day

Since everything is free here, all I can give away is my appreciation. Also in this post, a very bad headline by the Chicago Tribune

After a bit of a cold spell lasting a few months, where the needle barely moved on new subscriptions, the last few weeks have picked up. So I wanted to just take a moment away from my Herr TrumpepshTeen hate and say thank you for subscribing.

More on that in a bit, but first, some media commentary,

The Chicago Tribune Fails a Headline Test

In September last year, I extolled the virtues of the Chicago Tribune. Under Executive Editor Mitch Pugh, it was transforming into one of the more progressive newspapers in the Midwest. For anyone familiar with the Tribune’s history, this was a magical leap.

The Tribune originally made its mark under the rabidly conservative Robert R. McCormick: “Colonel McCormick” to his fans. It remained a staunchly conservative newspaper for years after he passed away. As time progressed, the paper did a little, too, but they still regularly endorsed Republican presidential candidates until they endorsed Barack Obama in 2008.

Eventually, the Tribune transitioned into what it is today, a generally enlightened newspaper, albeit with some of the usual mainstream press flaws.

You can read my original post here:

So I was disappointed when I saw a headline I’d expect out of the New York Times:

The journalism school I studied at was something of a training ground for budding Tribune reporters in my day, so even though I switched my journalism emphasis away from reporting, I’ve closely followed industry practice ever since my college days.

One of the things I can confidently say is that writing a headline is an art form, but it also involves an ethical responsibility.

In this specific case, the headline gives the reader the impression that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is bending the knee to the Trump regime over the tragic murder of a young Loyola student on Chicago’s lakefront at the hands of a Venezuelan immigrant.

In his full quote, Pritzker does point to the failures of the immigration system, but here’s where headline writing becomes an art form and where a headline writer can influence a reader’s thinking.

Let’s look at the full quote:¹

“This has been a terrible tragedy, and I know that the Gorman family has suffered mightily…There have been real failures. Those failures, of course, extend beyond the borders of Illinois. “That’s — they’re national failures, a failure to have comprehensive immigration reform, a failure of the president to follow his own edict to go after the worst of the worst.

“And in my view, we have a lot of work that we need to continue to do. But it is the job of the federal government to go after immigration enforcement, and it is the job of our local and state law enforcement to prosecute or catch violent criminals and prosecute them, and we should continue to do that both on the state level and the national level.

This is a stumbly statement from Pritzker, and if the headline had stated so, it would have been fine: “Pritzker stumbles through response to critics,” or something like that.

But that’s not what this headline does. It says he “acknowledges” the failures of the system, which in turn implies that Republican attacks aimed at him and Illinois’ sanctuary laws in the aftermath of the shooting had valid points.

They did not.

The Venezuelan who allegedly shot Sheridan Gorman, 25-year-old Jose Medina, had no significant criminal history. The only thing on his record was a shoplifting misdemeanor. There was no failure of the system here other than the fact that, assuming he shot her (early evidence points that way), he’s an asshole.

Assholes come in all shapes and sizes, most of them from right here in the good ole US of A. Their origin has little to do with their assholeishness.

But there are other considerations here, too.

There are some indications that Medina and his mother might have been one of the 10,000 migrants shipped to Chicago on the Abbott Express by Texas Governor Greg Abbott in 2023. This doesn’t excuse a shooting, but it does help explain things like misdemeanor shoplifting charges.

Abbott essentially forced migrants in Texas by gunpoint onto buses into a cold city, then dropped them off in the poorer parts town, where he knew the new migrants would provoke tension.

This is the classic Republican playbook: Force people to fight over what’s left of the pie after their wealthy benefactors have sucked the biggest, yummiest chunks into their gullets.

Republicans have politicized Sheridan Gorman's death by attacking “Democratic” sanctuary policies. But, whether he came to Illinois on the Abbott Express or not, Medina was in Illinois through something called the TRUST Act, which was signed into law in 2017 by a Republican Governor, Bruce Rauner.

The law was designed in 2016 to prevent Illinois law enforcement agencies from actively assisting federal goon agencies under Trump 1.0 from chasing down immigrants and people of color. In those days, everyone assumed Trump 1.0 would be nearly as methodical in their violence toward American society as Trump 2.0 is. They tried, but version 1.0 of the hate machine was filled with too many normal people who stood in the way of authoritarianism, so it was unable to do the same level of damage as version 2.0 is doing.

What the headline should have said

The headline should have reflected Pritzker’s frustration with the Trump regime. It wouldn’t have been hard to do. Watch me do it now:

Simple, no? If DHS had simply done what Trump said it would do during the election, Medina may have been tracked down for his misdemeanor and, if he was here illegally, deported. The headline also could have taken issue with this part of Pritzker’s statement:

…a failure of the president to follow his own edict to go after the worst of the worst

Medina, before the shooting, showed no indication of being the worst of the worst.

Still, even though it looks like he was here legally, if immigration agents had followed Trump’s original “plan,” he would have at least been put on notice: We’re watching you.

Would it have done any good? Who knows? What makes a young man want to shoot a young woman in the back as she’s walking away from him?

There is no test for this kind of behavior before the fact. Right now, there’s a redneck somewhere beating the crap out of some woman. Hell, Trump is alleged to have punched a young girl in the head after she tried to chomp his penis off when he tried to force her to have sex with him. How many of these anti-immigrant Republicans want to hold him accountable for that?

Can’t we simply agree that violent behavior of all kinds deserves punishment, and stop trying to demonize entire groups of people for the actions of one craven jerk?

And now, on to what was supposed to be my post, before the Tribune headline caught my eye…

It’s customer appreciation day at Ruminato

The great conceit of any writer is that we assume other people want to read our stuff. There is heady blindness to truth in that regard, I’m sure, but I proceed as if anyway.

So when people honor me with a paid subscription, I’m always a little stunned, flattered, and humbled. Lately, there have been a few more of you in this regard. It’s not going to my head, that’s for sure. It’s going to my heart. And I thank you all for your trust in me.

Normally, for a customer appreciation day, the appreciator offers some kind of deal or gift. I have found that, for me, it’s rare when people respond to subscription deals. So I’ve pretty much dropped them from the subscription nags.

So instead, I’ll just say thanks. (and if you want to subscribe but need a lower rate, let me know in a DM and I’ll set you up).

Thanks to my new (and older!) founding members. I call these subscribers Endowment members because the founding plan reminds me of an arts endowment. These kinds of subscriptions help encourage me to work on my novels and write my various screeds here on Substack.

I hope you find this corner of Substack engaging. I write commentary on news events, satire, humor, and even the occasional memoir. And, of course, fiction, which I hope you’ll also take a look at.

If you explore ruminato.com on your desktop, laptop, or tablet, you will find it easy to explore a lot of different types of content.

Thanks to all the regular paid subscribers, too. I’m inching towards 30, which isn’t many compared to the big Substack players, but is a lot more than I thought I’d have several months ago. I appreciate and am humbled by your subscriptions.

Thanks, too, to all those who subscribe for free. One thing about the Substack model is that we can’t subscribe with a paid subscription to everyone we like. I know I sure can’t.

This is a big reason I keep my posts and comment area free. It tells me that the people who become paying subscribers really want me to keep writing. Some of them tell me so:

Geri was referring to this article:

[SATIRE] Ruminato Announces its First Movie Production: Ghost

Roxanne was more generalized in her reasons for support:

Substack generates these images whenever someone says it’s okay to share their endorsement. Thanks for that!

Sadly, I sometimes don’t read all my Substack emails, and I just discovered this image generation thing during the last week or so.

So, to those of you who have left an endorsement before, thank you. Sorry that I deleted it!

Thanks, too, to you restackers out there. I’d have one subscriber, me, if not for you.

Take a look around if you’re new here. There’s a lot of stuff, some of it weird, some of it in questionable taste, some with grammatical boo-boos, but I try to give it my best every time.

No matter what your level of support, thanks again for your readership. It really means a lot to me.

Footnotes

1. Ruminato Gift Link! 🎁 https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/03/24/jb-pritzker-brandon-johnson-sheridan-gorman/?share=jdepantto4orazaceadi 🎁