Now that this year’s Lisagor Awards are behind us, the Chicago Headline Club needs to go back to the drawing board. The competition’s guidelines are obsolete.
“I can’t imagine a Lisagors where the Tribune and Sun-Times don’t go head-to-head,” says board member Flynn McRoberts of Bloomberg News. Yousef suggested I talk to McRoberts because he speaks for a committee responsible for keeping the Lisagors in step with changing times. “We spent all sorts of time talking about categories,” he tells me—but at the molecular level of “affiliated” versus unaffiliated bloggers, freelancers versus staff writers. The circulation divide was like the elephant in the room no one saw. “The 250,000 is an artifact that just sat there,” says McRoberts. Next time, “this will be the first item on our agenda.”
Whatever works.
