This edition of Chicago Public Square is brought to you by readers including Lora Engdahl, Wendy Greenhouse, Jim Grimes and Mike Gold. You can join them here. And this would be a good time to do that if your last name begins with H. Now the news:
Chicagoist’s chance. New-media veteran Mike Fourcher—a founding writer for the original Chicagoist—takes a critical look at Chance the Rapper’s purchase of the brand: “The economics of local news is bad and getting worse.”
■ Real estate watchdog Dennis Rodkin reflects on his shoutout in the song announcing the Chicagoist deal: “Chance the Rapper now joins Michael Jordan, Danny Bonaduce and Billy Corgan on the list of celebrities who’ve publicly denounced me for reporting on their real estate deals.”
■ Three things about Chance’s fraught relationship with journalism.
■ Disclosure: Your Chicago Public Square publisher played with Chicagoist staffers on a softball team in 2014.
■ A junk peddler’s lament to the Trib’s Mary Schmich: “There used to be a lot of us.”
■ The meeting that unveiled new details about Lincoln Yards left some in the crowd angry. (Rendering: Sterling Bay/Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.)
Underpassed. Citing a run of underage drinking, drug use and fights at a nearby park, a Chicago City Council committee has given a green light to closing Chicago Avenue under Lake Shore Drive overnights …
■ … and to the renaming of Congress Parkway for civil rights champion Ida B. Wells.
■ The Trib lists nine things to know about Wells.
Chicago’s first public law school. That’s what John Marshall will become as it’s absorbed into the University of Illinois at Chicago under a deal approved by the boards of both schools.
■ An Ohio Democrat in Congress says marijuana should be legal in all 50 states.
■ Revealed: The people behind the previously anonymous Sleeping Giants Twitter account, which has effectively pressured advertisers to abandon support for Fox News and Breitbart programming.
‘It is a moral stain that will follow you for the rest of your life.’ Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren condemns President Trump’s pick to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Kathy Kraninger, for her role in the separation of immigrant children from their parents.
■ Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, rejects the conclusion Russia interfered in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf.
■ Stephen Colbert to Nielsen: “No, one side is wrong. It’s subtle, but I’ll give you a clue.”
Trump’s Trumpiest tweets. A new analysis suggests the ones written by his staff are more popular than the ones he thumbs himself.
■ Politico’s editor-in-chief is abandoning his skepticism about Trump’s role as a Russian tool: “Maybe … he can’t admit that Moscow tried to put him in the Oval Office because he’s under strict instructions not to.”
■ The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg: If the NRA was compromised by Russia, the whole Republican Party’s in trouble.
■ Rolling Stone: “The NRA Is Awfully Quiet About Maria Butina.”
■ The Onion: “FBI Reveals Maria Butina Traded Sex In Exchange For All 62,984,828 Votes Trump Received In 2016.”
Hail, Pitchfork. The annual music fest opens today in Chicago.
■ Chicago magazine says this year’s Pitchfork features more local acts than any previous lineup.
■ In an audio interview 20 years after that landing, one of the “Voices of Apollo” recalled tense moments when “computer alarms began to pop up.”