console.log not working when creating Chrome extension context menu [duplicate]

I'm writing a simple Chrome extension and have been reading the documentation on context menus (i.e. right-click menus).

I downloaded the basic example code (found here) and have been running it in my browser. The example provided creates a context menu with some options in it. When one of those options is clicked, some information is logged to the console.

Without changing any of the example code, I was not able to get the console.log() statements to work. I removed all the extraneous code to create the simplest version possible that recreates the issue.

function genericOnClick(info, tab) {
  console.log("something");
  alert("something else");
}

var title = "Test 'selection' menu item";
var id = chrome.contextMenus.create({"title": title, "contexts":
["selection"], "onclick": genericOnClick});

The manifest.json is below:

{
  "name": "Context Menus Sample",
  "description": "Shows some of the features of the Context Menus API",
  "version": "0.6",
  "permissions": ["contextMenus"],
  "background": {
    "scripts": ["sample.js"]
  },
  "manifest_version": 2
}

With the above code in place, right clicking on a selection opens a context menu which has an option "Test 'selection' menu item". Clicking on this menu item will alert "something else", but nothing will appear in the console.

I am getting no errors in the console.

To reiterate, this behavior was not working for me when I downloaded the basic example provided here and ran it making no changes.