By Michael Miner
For weeks City Hall engaged in fruitless conversation with Chicago’s publishers over introducing the news racks here. The talks went nowhere for many reasons. The papers foresaw a loss of control, a concern any paper worth its salt immediately raises to a constitutional crisis. Within broad limits, a paper is free to place its honor boxes where it wants them, redeploy them to chase changing markets, service them, and adorn them with placards screaming each day’s scoop. But a paper in a multiple news rack might share it with a dozen others. That paper can’t unilaterally relocate anywhere, it can’t mount placards, it can’t even maintain its news rack on its own.
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Bridget Gainer, a City Hall budget analyst who’s negotiated with Chicago’s papers, says Chicago picked Decaux for a pilot program on the recommendation of San Francisco news agencies, and for its experience building what urban designers call “street furniture.” But when the model arrived in Chicago and the papers here looked it over, they weren’t happy.
Some protested that the individual boxes weren’t even shaped right. The Reader, for example, can stuff about 90 papers in each of the ten boxes it has scattered around downtown. The new boxes would hold 10 to 15. Then we’ll give you more boxes, the city countered. But why go to the trouble? The proposed news racks, in the view of Chicago’s suspicious newspapers, were a solution where there wasn’t a problem–and the racks were sure to create one.
Rosenthal took it for granted that the council would promptly pass Natarus’s ordinance and that the city would promptly sign a yearlong contract with Decaux. If the publishers wanted a seat at the table they’d have to settle for the plank available. The deal was done. “I take it as a given all of you oppose it,” he said. “I assume you’re all reserving your right to sue us.”
The man from the Tribune said San Francisco’s trial run consisted of a dozen multiple news racks (one of which was made by Decaux, the others by competitors). Chicago’s beginning with 60. This isn’t a test, he said. “This is the future.”
When Decaux bid $40 million last year for the right to supply street furniture to Sydney, Australia, a certain past unpleasantness in Belgium came to light. But Jean-Francois Decaux, head of international operations, explained away the 1992 conviction of founder Jean-Claude Decaux and the one-year suspended sentence he received. Young Decaux said his father’s record was expunged once he explained he’d simply been making campaign contributions. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the son acknowledged that Decaux willingly contributes to political campaigns wherever those contributions are legal. “Everybody does it,” he said.
