Just when it looked like the Chicago news media were fixing to focus on the issues – wham! – the Illinois Appellate Court tossed the frontrunner in Chicago’s mayoral race off the Feb. 22 primary ballot. True, that appellate decision only lasted for three days—on Jan. 27 the state Supreme Court restored Rahm Emanuel to

Polls don’t always tell the truth. That doesn’t mean they lie; it just means they can be misleading. An example could be found if one followed the polls during Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race between Rand Paul and Jack Conway.

With so much sloganeering and mud-slinging leading up to the Nov. 2 mid-term elections, the challenge for Chicago’s news media—print, broadcast, online—was whether to echo the races’ shallow bombast … or cut through to the issues. By and large, the metropolitan press held to the latter, more difficult course. Which is saying something, given the