NU's Fisk Hall to be renamed Tamron Hall Hall in honor of expose of Racist Limbaugh

Another was that Martin Luther King's assassin should be honored," Lavine said. "These quote unquote quotes go right to what Stephen Colbert would call 'truthiness,' or what the Greeks called a myth. Myths, though not true, are truer than the truth, and we learn a lot from them."

Lavine speaks with authority, even though he was not exactly speaking in the paragraph above. Lavine was honored by Northwestern University last year when it was discovered that he himself had published a "Letter from the Dean"  that some believed captured the spirit of an unnamed student's endorsement of a controversial plan by Lavine to shift Medill's emphasis from journalism to marketing, that is, a shift from reporting verbatim quotes to capturing the spirit of something that helps sell it. 

Lavine, perhaps modestly, didn't seek out the honor of retaining his job but nonetheless may have derived great satisfaction after Northwestern changed its motto from "whatsoever things be true" to "we're the Harvard of the Midwest in tuition fees."

The building that houses the journalism school has been named Fisk Hall since 1899. "On behalf of the university I apologize for being so tardy in updating the name," Lavine said. "And we thought it was bad when we tarried in changing Dyche Stadium to Ryan Field."

Lavine added that he hoped that Hall, who left Fox in Chicago, to achieve journalistic acclaim at MSNBC, would come back to the city and take over the two struggling newspapers here. "This is an era of consolidation. I see a model for the Tribune and the Sun-Times in what Channel 48 (channels 2 + 5 + 9 + 32) did when they formed the Local News Operation," he said.

Lavine said that the two newspapers' coverage of Racist Limbaugh was deplorable. "Yes, they criticized Limbaugh, which is their duty. And they cited one or another racist thing that Limbaugh actually said. But nowhere over the last couple of days did I see any of the fabricated quotes attributed to Limbaugh.

"And, let's face it, that's not because the columnists (Slezak, Morrissey, Rosenbloom, Harris) felt that the made-up quotes were somehow unfair. They just either deliberately didn't address the quotes that captured Racist Limbaugh's spirit or weren't even aware of what was going on around them," he said.

Hall said she was honored by the accolade. "As it says below my picture on Facebook, it's a ding dong dilly of a dinger," she said.

Meanwhile, Northwestern alums were unanimous in their endorsement of the name change in honor of cable news's capture of the spirit of the truth.  Brent Musburger, (alum in spirit '65, maybe. I don't know. Wikipedia didn't have the date), who was recognized by the Medill Hall of Achievement in 2006, said "How about that Crimson Tide!"