It Was A Good Run

Cue Boyz II Men because it's the end of the road for Amy Jacobson at WMAQ. After 10 years on Chicago TV, Amy Jacobson left (or was fired) from Channel 5 in the wake of what has to go down as the worst judgment call ever in television journalism history. It is likely that her career is over at this point. While not quite at the level of "Horace Grant got Joan Esposito pregnant" hysteria, this story is sufficiently well-known to permanently kill any credibility she once had.

Chicago Tribune hack Eric Zorn wrote an online column about how Amy Jacobson is being unfairly treated because she is a woman. Zorn's conclusion is that AJ was merely developing a source for a story and that if any male reporter did the same thing, this would be a non-story. The real issue here is not Jacobson's gender, but that AJ took her young children to swim in a pool with a murder suspect. Either she's a lousy mother, an unethical journalist or both.

Although his columns would seem to confirm this, I hope Zorn has never taken a journalism class. Relationships which create actual or perceived conflicts of interst are contrary to every canon of journalistic ethics. This should be obvious to Zorn, and it casts doubt on the integrity of everyone at the Tribune.