St. Patrick’s Day and Journalism

I’m going to combine two posts here that don’t sound like they’d go well together – “Day Drinking” and lazy journalism. There was an article by Stanley Bing (the pseudonym of an executive who writes for Fortune magazine) who happens to 1) be an actual business executive 2) writes effectively (and hilariously). While I can’t find the exact post I am paraphrasing below:

Whenever I see anything written about my company in the popular press, it is generally incorrect. Thus I must conclude that most of what I see written about other companies in the press isn’t right, either.

Business Insider is a great resource that I read on my iPhone most days when I have a few minutes to kill. They have some original content and re-post from other sources. Recently I read about the “five biggest” St. Patricks’ day celebrations (parties) which was a typical “puff piece” article for them – you can see it here.

The only problem with this article is… that it is lazy and wrong. Our own correspondent Dan happened to be on the ground in Las Vegas for St. Patrick’s day last year and he said it was “Chicago on an inter-galactic scale” which I believe since Dan has been at a ton of drinking events through being a sports fan forever. I am having trouble verifying this on the ol’ intertubes but it is the kind of event where “hey, the Chicago River is green, we can trot this story out every year, there we are done” but the massive scale of Las Vegas means that if you have a drinking event they can just pour out of the hotels and onto the streets (that they shut down) and go crazy and drink outdoors. Probably the only way to officially verify this is to send Art Mann out to Las Vegas as the ultimate decider…

Onto Chicago for St. Patrick’s day… we had a beautiful day and so everyone was out in force. People were lining up per usual in the wee hours (many bars open at 6am) for a long day of drinking here in River North.

I loved this outfit… a drunk gumby up at Paris Club!

And the refuse lining the town everywhere the next morning…





Cross posted at LITGM

7 thoughts on “St. Patrick’s Day and Journalism”

  1. Carl;
    Sorry to see that you read Business insider.

    I stopped reading the garbage they write when they wrote an article claiming that the US dollar has NOT depreciated in value ( purchasing power) since 1950 !!!
    Yep, they asserted that in the last 60 years !!!!! or so, despite an average snnual inflation rate just north of 2.5%, the dollar has not lost any value whatsoever.
    The article was written by their ” economics” editor.

    I just cite one of the moronic articles I used to read on BI.

    Find yourself a real educational, informative site to read
    BI is the business/ financial analogue of THE ENQUIRER.

  2. “From what I have heard and read, Chicago was a drunken brawl/mess Saturday;”

    The problem is Wrigleyville. It used to be more like a fun backyard party, but they’ve tried to maximize the appeal of the neighborhood by turning it into a big drinking theme park. The pub crawls are ungodly awful. A couple years ago I was at a friends Christmas party on the North Side and inadvertently took a wrong turn onto Clark St during some December drinking festival. It was like the zombie apocalypse. Riot police everywhere, smoke, trash, vomit. Every year I wish the Cubs would move just to end the madness around the ballpark.

  3. “Chicago was a drunken brawl/mess Saturday;”

    The south side Irish have their own parade on Western Avenue and 103rd. It was cancelled for several years because of trouble but it was held Sunday again this year and was peaceful.The family was all there.

  4. It’s been many years, but I’ve had some great times at the South Side parade. Some of my favorite people in the entire world.

    The problem with Wrigleyville is the alderman, the rooftop owners, and some of the bar owners have totally ruined the neighborhood. I don’t blame the Cubs, although they had plans for wedging hotels, museums, and parks around the ballpark that didn’t make much sense either.
    The surrounding businesses have decided they want to take the experience that occurs inside the ballpark and replicate it on an industrial scale all year round. It just doesn’t work in a mature residential area, and they’ve now created a monster.

    Luckily, all the hype about the Cubs winning the World Series is only talk this year. Their prospects are just too young. They have the right coach in place but are still probably a few years off. There’s a lot of optimism about their pitching, but I need to see more proof of that.

Comments are closed.