I met Mike Volpe at a meeting of bloggers organized by the Miguel Del Valle campaign at a north side coffee house
I just happened to sit down at the table where Mike had already set up his laptop.
“Okay if I sit here,” I asked? I set down my latte and my Mac.
We shook hands and introduced ourselves to each other. Mike wasn’t a Miguel supporter. He was blogging about the mayoral campaign and since Miguel was scheduled to show up at this event, Mike showed up too.
We got into a discussion slash argument over teacher unions and collective bargaining, tenure and seniority. He jumped all over my use of the word, “fair” when I defended seniority. He was impressed by a made for TV movie he had seen about Ron Clark. Clark’s story is one of those Superman bios about a private school that works, backed by Disney and Oprah. As you can probably guess, it’s no Norma Rae.
We parted with a hand shake and he later sent me a link to his blog where I was nicely and accurately quoted.
Today Mike sent me a link to an item by Mike Minor from the Chicago Reader. Minor tells the story of how Volpe basically got screwed by the Sun-Times out of a story he had done the original research on. It was a story about corruption and ghost payrollers in Chicago.
Minor says he is sympathetic to Volpe and I also think Volpe got a bad deal. A little guy who got screwed by a big media corporation.
The Sun-Times could get away with it because they are big and powerful and Volpe’s got nothing and nobody to protect him.
It’s not fair.
How ironic.
Fred Klonsky 