Category: Midwest

University of Michigan’s Wallace House creates new Knight-Wallace Midwest Fellowship

The University of Michigan’s Wallace House is expanding its program with the addition of two fellowships targeting Midwest founders, editors and senior reporters who are focused on local and regional news. The new Knight-Wallace Midwest Fellowship was created to combat shrinking and disappearing newsrooms in the Midwest, said Wallace House Director Lynette Clemetson. “There are…

How a popular media bias chart determines what news can be trusted

The headline on a recent article in The Palmer Report suggested that its writer had landed a scoop. “Turns out Donald Trump directly sabotaged the U.S. military mission against Baghdadi,” it read. The subsequent analysis piece written by the blog’s founder, Bill Palmer, a self-described political journalist, went on to accuse President Trump of nearly…

‘Quiet rooms’ investigation is a call to action for community news outlets

Monica Seals didn’t waste  time. Within 24 hours after the nonprofit ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Tribune published an investigation revealing the widespread practice of putting children into solitary confinement in school districts in Illinois, the Centralia radio reporter pressed local officials for answers. Seals, news director at the Withers Broadcasting station in the Southern…

Growing community media: After four decades, a local newspaper company turns the page

For the past 39 years, Wednesday Journal, Inc. has served up weekly community newspapers, starting with its home base in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, and expanding to cover neighboring River Forest, Forest Park, Riverside, Brookfield and the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. But for the past 10 of those years, advertising…