[marothisu]

Nobody is celebrating a loss, at all. Perhaps you should read the posts more objectively. A loss is bad no matter what. All people are saying is that outside of 1 piece of commentary now (which doesn't make a trend), there is barely any accountability on the part of a newspaper to say "this is bad, but not as bad as we or anyone else expected while we wrote many articles about it."

They didn't use the wrong data either. It's the only population data available which gives any view into these things. You can't blame the Tribune at all for that, and I don't even blame them for pushing the "exodus " narrative. However, almost doubling down as if the 50k to 80k loss per year is still a fact, after the Census reported a figure almost 14X less, is disingenuous and pretty shoddy.. As journalists they should be saying "it's not nearly as bad as expected but it's still not good."

By the way, I subscribe to the online version of the Tribune. I don't think they are terrible, but they do give unequal "front page" press to various things that are doom and gloom. Usually buried down is anything ever to celebrate. And while bad news sells, and you never want to bury it, not having some sort of balance is not good. People see these things and it plays a psychological role on how they perceive their city/region. You may live on a street in Chicago, or a suburb, that never sees any issues but if the news you consume is constantly bad then it will play a role in how you actually perceive everything. I actually have friends in Chicago who subscribe to it, live in areas that don't really see these types of bad issues, but it has made them afraid of so much even though their real life experience has never had anything bad happen nor witness itz and they're all very gainfully employed.. And the Tribune, as one of the largest newspapers in the country, gets its news stories picked up much further than the Chicago region. These play a massive role in so much more than people realize.

Anyway, my own theory on this has to do with last Census. All indications are that the city population was very undercounted. I believe some people said by even as much as 100k or 200k people. It is very possible 250K people left Illinois but doesn't look like it due to undercounting in 2010. We'll probably never know for sure though.