Like many statehouse press corps, the one in Illinois is a fraction of what it used to be. Since the legislative session started this year, about a dozen reporters, including interns, have been assigned to cover what’s going on in the Illinois capital. A decade ago, there were 30 full-time statehouse press reporters in Springfield…
Media coverage of violence on the Chicago’s south and west sides is both a symptom and a factor in Chicago’s historic segregation, and one with political and social ramifications felt across the city. In the national media, Chicago is a poster child for “black on black violence,” a one-sided framing of violent crime in disinvested…
Jennie Crabbe and Colleen Schrappen finished their last shifts on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch copy desk on May 1, signing off on Twitter and in an email to colleagues. Lee Enterprises announced in February that it was eliminating the copy desk and moving copy and design functions to Indiana. Avis Meyer, a veteran of the…
Reporter Megan Jones of the Aurora Beacon-News was one of the first reporters on the scene of a mass shooting in Aurora in February. She had just finished interviewing a mother whose son was shot the month before when she heard an ambulance scream past on its way to the Henry Pratt Co. manufacturing plant…
In 2012, University of Missouri journalism professor Mike Jenner was making a presentation to students in a “Journalism and Democracy” seminar about how the tough economy had affected newspapers and what challenges reporters would face in the future. At one point a woman said, “Mike, we’ve been here four years, and this has been going…