When Alden Global Capital bought Tribune Publishing in May 2021 and slashed Chicago Tribune newsroom staff to bare bones, few media experts and Chicago journalists were surprised. “Years of poor management” at Tribune Publishing paved the way for Alden, said Brant Houston, professor and Knight chair in investigative and enterprise reporting at the University of…
Baffled travelers stepping off buses into an unknown city and life. Families huddled on police stations’ floors. Painful accounts of robberies and rapes, and of deaths in jungles and rivers – the price of escaping grim horrors. These and other stories told by the thousands of immigrants who have surged into Chicago in recent months,…
Earlier this week, a friend of Chicago Tribune investigative reporter Christy Gutowski was walking past her 22-year-old daughter’s bedroom and heard Gutowski’s voice. Gutowski hadn’t stopped for a visit, however. Her voice was coming from a podcast the news outlet launched in an attempt to reach a younger demographic of its in-depth reporting. The eight-episode…
Ray Long is either the luckiest man in Illinois journalism or he has an inside source. His just-released book about former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan came out only a few weeks after a headline making 22-count federal indictment was filed by the U.S. Justice Department against the 79-year-old career politician. “I turned…
Late last month, my son and I were photographed outside of Columbia College Chicago for a story about my employer’s new policy limiting children on campus. The Chicago Tribune photographer captured him in a wrap on my back, his blue Vans untied and a floral mask covering his face. It was my baby’s first newspaper…