City News is dead... long live city news

There was big news today, too: new daybooks from the Sun-Times and Tribune--apparently the City News idea is too good to kill.

Briefly, the City News daybook is paid for by subscribers in most news media businesses, who traditionally paid for content they could use in their own stories without attribution in addition to a variety of services that included the daybook, a schedule of what's newsworthy for the coming day that is distributed each morning (If you've ever thought that it seems like the news is the same on all the different channels, one reason is that all the producers are always reading from the same schedule).

Anyway, ever the competitor, now that the Tribune has closed City News Service, the Sun-times has a new daybook up and running and here's the information. Sun Times News Group Daybook:


News can be E-MAILED to STNGwire@suntimes.com
Or FAXED to 312-321-2148
Or MAILED to STNGWire, c/o Chicago Sun-Times, 350 N. Orleans, 9th Floor, Chicago, IL 60654

The STNGwire staff will be available 24 hours a day starting Monday, Feb. 13. The direct phone is 312-321-2147. If this e-mail did not reach the appropriate media contact for your organization, please forward it, or let us know the proper person to contact. If you have questions, call Jeff Mayes at 312-321-2895.

Thank you
Jeff Mayes, STNG Editor
312-321-2895

The Sun-times news really comes to us thanks to Clare Fauke from Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 1--she is planning an upcoming event featuring John Edwards and hotel employees and when she agreed to, in the words of the original City News Bureau, 'check it out.' Thank you Clare.

Meanwhile Mitch Dudek, who worked for Tribune's City News Service, is apparently going to start up a similar effort from Trib Tower. But the fax number we have is the same as the Tribune City Desk fax. So we'll wait to investigate.

I have to go home! More on this later.