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In it’s hay day, reading the Tribune made you smarter.  You got great advice on how to handle wacky Uncle Harold or that rotten boyfriend. The news was reliable, offset with serious insights and Mike Royko’s voice of reason.  The Sunday Magazine was thick and delicious, featuring social events, spreads of our homes, art collections and gardens. There were articles about Chicago power, Chicago Scandal, Chicago Women,  Chicago history and personal essays so beautifully written they made you weep.  It was about us relative to the rest of the world.  Then it changed, thinned out, got hip and sensational but not enough of either.  Today it files for Chapter 11.  I think the law should be renamed The Chapter 11 I Blew It Law. Give Me Shelter From My Creditors so I can figure out what to do next.   But since you didn’t know what to do first when you took it over, this raises my skepticism. The death of newspaper has been predicted for 2010.  It looks like the death of the Tribune is slightly ahead of schedule…and that’s only because you killed it! Bring back the people who have loved, lived, shaped and written for the Tribune, they knew what they were doing, they knew this market, and they cared about it as a Newspaper and not a holding.